DW BUREAU / Chandigarh The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today requested the Election Commission of India (ECI) to restrain the Congress government from indulging in any kind of political vendetta besides demanding appointment of a regular DGP in the State. Addressing a press conference here, party senior vice president Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said the party was making this appeal to the ECI because the Congress government was bent on using ad-hoc appointees in the police administration to strike out at the SAD. "The Congress government appointed S Chattopadhyay as the new Acting DGP in the middle of the night on December 16 after replacing the incumbent IPS Sahota following the surfacing of a letter which questioned the Congress government's resolve to implicate top SAD leaders including SAD President Sukhbir Singh Badal and former minister Bikram Singh Majithia in false cases. This appointment was done despite the fact that the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) is scheduled to take a decision on appointment of a regular DGP on December 21 and Mr Chattopdhyay is not even among the candidates shortlisted for consideration for the top post". Asking the Congress government to tell what was the emergent need for appoint Mr Chattopadhyay for a period of four days only, Dr Cheema said "this appointment strengthens the hypothesis that Pradesh Congress President Navjot Singh Sidhu, who has been championing the cause of the officer since long, is behind this appointment. It is also clear that the officer has been given the charge of Acting DGP to implement the agenda of the Congress party". He also gave details about the chequered past of Mr Chattopadhyay including the fact that he had earlier also tried to implicate the Badal family in an alleged disproportionate assets case in which the family was acquitted. He said other controversies of the officer included leveling serious allegations against his colleagues besides cropping up of his name in a suicide case. Asserting that this adhocism had been created deliberately to keep top officers on tenterhooks and coerce them into taking action against the Akali leadership, Dr Cheema said earlier two heads of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) had been replaced after they refused to become party to the vendetta exercise. (editor@dailyworld.in)