Manoj Kumar Agarwal, a 1990-batch IAS officer of the Bengal cadre, is the second officer connected to the elections to be appointed by the new government.
West Bengal chief electoral officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal, who received both praise for conducting a largely violence-free assembly election and criticism for the mass disenfranchisement during the special intensive revision under his watch, was appointed the chief secretary of the eastern state on Monday.
The development came on a day chief minister Suvendu Adhikari allotted portfolios among the five ministers who took oath with him at Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground on Saturday.
Agarwal, a 1990-batch IAS officer of the West Bengal cadre, is the second officer connected to the assembly elections to be appointed by the new government headed by Adhikari. On Saturday, the administration appointed Subrata Gupta, who was a special observer appointed by the Election Commission, as adviser to the chief minister, hours after the new Bharatiya Janata Party government took oath in the state.
“The Governor is pleased to appoint Shri Manoj Kumar Agarwal, IAS (WB:1990), Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal and ex officio Additional Chief Secretary, Home and Hill Affairs (Election) Department… as Chief Secretary to the Government of West Bengal until further order(s),” said a notification issued by the department of personnel and administrative reforms, according to news agency ANI.
Agarwal replaced Dushyant Nariala, a 1993-batch IAS officer who was appointed by the Election Commission on March 15 in the run up to the polls. Nariwala will be Bengal’s new resident commissioner in Delhi. Nariala had replaced Nariwala Nandini Chakravorty, who was handpicked by then chief minister Mamata Banerjee on December 31, 2025. She was Bengal’s first female chief secretary.
Agarwal — who immediately took charge and sat beside Adhikari during his first meeting with IAS officers on Monday — did not speak to the media.
The chief secretary is the top bureaucrat of the state government and is entrusted with coordinating with various departments.
The BJP came to power for the first time in the state after handing a landslide defeat to the Trinamool Congress in the April assembly polls. The saffron party secured 207 seats in the 294-member assembly, reducing the TMC to 80 seats.
Who is Manoj Kumar Agarwal?
The CEO of a state becoming the chief secretary is rare, though not unheard of in India. In 2018, Vijay Kumar Dev, who was the then CEO of Delhi, took over as chief secretary of the Capital, where services is handled by the lieutenant governor who reports to the Union home ministry.
Born in July 1966, Agarwal acquired an engineering degree before becoming a bureaucrat. As CEO, he was also the ex-officio additional chief secretary at the home and hill affairs department which Banerjee headed. Earlier he served various departments as principal secretary and commissioner.
Agarwal, who was appointed Bengal CEO on August 12, 2025, oversaw SIR where 9.1 million names were deleted in all, including 2.71 million names flagged under a controversial logical discrepancy category.
He then helped conduct the two-phase assembly polls that saw an unprecedented deployment of central forces and only sporadic clashes, a rarity in the politically violent state.
Trinamool slams appointment
The TMC criticised the appointment.
“The so called “neutral umpire” is rewarded with the post of top bureaucrat of the @BJP4India dispensation in Bengal. Does anyone still SERIOUSLY believe #bengalelections2026 were free and fair ? Outrageous and brazen,” TMC MP Sagarika Ghose said on X.
The BJP’s five ministers also received their portfolios.
Agnimitra Paul, the first woman inducted into the cabinet, will head the municipal affairs and urban development department, which Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim previously managed.
Paul will also be in charge of the women and child development and social welfare department which was previously under Shashi Panja.
Former Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh, during whose tenure BJP set a record by winning 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, was put in charge of rural development and animal husbandry departments. These were previously under TMC’s Pradip Majumdar and Swapan Debnath respectively. Both lost the polls.
