UP DGP Mukul Goel sacked over intel failure on Gyanvapi Mosque

Mumbai: Sacked Uttar Pradesh Director General (DG) of police (since July 2021) Mukul Goel was removed from his post Wednesday establishing Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s complete supremacy in the state and, his clear efforts to plug intelligence loopholes that were recently exposed in the largest state of India.

The Gyanvapi mosque flare up since May 7, 2022, with large crowds assembling to prevent the survey being carried out, was the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back, that prompted Chief Minister Adityanath to crack the whip and eject Goel from his perch.

A senior BJP leader terms the move a significant development and says, “You must remember that the fracas that ensued at the Gyanvapi mosque was a consequence of a major police intelligence failure or, even worse failure by the DGP to act on intel inputs through timely intervention to prevent the flareup.”

What is even more significant about Goel’s removal is the fact that he was recommended to the post by none other than Union Home Minister Amit Shah around a year back. Before he became DGP, Goel served as Additional Director General of the Border Security Force.

CM Yogi, however, had red-flagged Goel’s close association with Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav especially, in the run up to the Uttar Pradesh state assembly elections. Goel was found to have been regularly meeting up with the SP leader and even believed that there was an imminent change in government in UP with Akhilesh set to take over, post elections and, so was an almost daily visitor to the opposition party leader’s office.

He had also served as Additional Director General (Law and Order) when the infamous Muzaffarnagar riots had broken out in 2013 under the Samajwadi Party government led by Akhilesh Yadav.

In poetic justice, a Varanasi court on Wednesday directed the completion of the proposed survey at the Gyanvapi mosque and submission of the report by May 17, 2022 while also warning the district administration against any further delaying tactics under some pretext or the other. This observation comes in the wake of the demand by the petitioner Anjuman Intejamia Masajid (AIM) for changing the advocate commissioner Ajay Kumar Mishra which was also rejected by the court. The survey includes the videography and inspection of the Maa Shringar Gauri Sthal and the adjacent Gyanvapi mosque premises.