Surat has a full-time municipal commissioner again. The Gujarat government on Saturday appointed Rajkumar Beniwal, a 2004-batch IAS officer, to the post, moving him from the managing director’s chair at Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilisers and Chemicals in Bharuch. The order came as part of a seven-officer reshuffle and relieves Surat Collector Tejas Parmar, who had been running the civic body on additional charge since mid-August.
The same notification gave Sanjeev Kumar, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, additional charge of GNFC until further orders. It also shifted Rajesh Manjhu to Superintendent of Stamps at Gandhinagar, handed Jenu Devan additional charge as Revenue Inspection Commissioner, moved Rachit Raj to the Tribal Development directorate and posted Harshil Meena as District Development Officer in Mehsana, according to The Hans India.
Why the chair was empty
The vacancy was not routine. The state moved Beniwal’s predecessor, M Nagarajan, out of the post on 11 August after the Gujarat High Court examined a demolition drive carried out in Surat’s Nasirnagar area on 30 May. The court observed that the demolition appeared illegal on a prima facie view, and indicated that an inquiry into it could not be treated as impartial while senior officers connected to the case remained in place. Nagarajan went to Gandhinagar as state project director for Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, as Law Trend reported, and the state placed that transfer on record before the High Court, per LiveLaw.
Twenty-six residents filed the petition behind all of this. Around 100 families lost their homes in the drive. Five junior civic employees have been suspended, and one of them, an executive engineer, has said he acted on instructions from above rather than on his own authority. Courts have not tested that claim, and the departmental inquiry remains open.
What three weeks of stand-in rule costs
Additional charge is designed as a short bridge. Surat ran on one for roughly three and a half weeks, through the tail end of the monsoon and into the run-up to the festival months, when drainage complaints, road repair, health surveillance and licensing pressure all arrive together. Parmar was carrying a full district alongside it. Files do not pause for that arrangement; decisions needing a commissioner’s signature queue up behind it.
For residents, the difference is mostly about accountability. A stand-in has little reason to reopen contested questions or reverse a predecessor’s call, and every reason to keep the lights on until someone permanent arrives. A full-time commissioner owns the office, including the parts of it now sitting before the High Court.
An unusual route to the job
Beniwal arrives from a state fertiliser and chemicals company rather than from a run of urban postings. Gujarat shuffles officers between public sector undertakings and civic roles often enough that this raises no eyebrows on its own. It does mean his first months involve learning a large municipal machine while the Nasirnagar matter continues in court and the internal inquiry runs alongside it.
The inquiry is the first test. The High Court’s stated worry was that responsibility would stop at the junior tier, and five suspended employees is where the record stands today. The second test is procedural: whether the Surat Municipal Corporation tightens what has to be on file before any demolition begins, starting with notice periods and a written record of who authorised the operation. Without that, scrutiny of one drive leaves the next one unchanged.
Surat has watched the commissioner’s post change hands twice in under a month. Whether the office runs differently under the third occupant than it did under the first is the question that will reach residents.
Sources: The Hans India, Law Trend, LiveLaw, Gujarat Samachar
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.