Haider Aziz Safwi

Owing to his specialisation in law and order management, Safwi was appointed the first-ever Inspector General of South Bengal with an aim to control the rising crimes in the state.

He had publicly stated his desire to defeat the then CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, from his home turf of Jadavpur, in the 2011 Assembly Elections, as the main aim of his political career.

He was elected for the TMC as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from the Uluberia Purba constituency in the 2011 West Bengal state assembly election, with a margin of over 19,000 votes and his closest friend for over four decades, Retired IAS Officer Manish Gupta, defeated Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee from his own seat of Jadavpur.

As co-operation minister, Safwi was widely credited with putting in place a task force to reduce the number of sick co-operative banks in the state.

His shift from the Cabinet to the post of Deputy Speaker was largely due to his non-controversial image and experience in administration.

On 12 December 2018, Safwi died following a sudden cardiac arrest while getting ready to leave his house to attend office at the Vidhan Sabha.

However the biggest controversy of his career remains the time when he was infamously denied the post of Police Commissioner of Kolkata in 1996 despite being initially recommended for it.

Safwi attributed the decision to deny him the post of Commissioner to ‘extraneous considerations unexpected from a government claiming to uphold the secular credentials of the Indian Constitution’ and to his refusal to bow to Buddhadeb's commands.

It was only when the then Chief Minister Jyoti Basu intervened that the warring duo quietened down and Safwi withdrew his application for VRS (Voluntary Retirement).