Delhi holds back Vivek Bhagat's additional DCP charge after he asks to wait

The Delhi government said late on Monday that the current duty charge of additional deputy commissioner of police assigned to Assistant Commissioner Vivek Bhagat has been withheld. Bhagat is accused of sexually harassing a woman journalist during a protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar at Jantar Mantar on 3 October. The government said he had asked, of his own volition, not to take the charge until a full inquiry is finished and concluded to a satisfactory point.

The order being modified is dated 5 October. It gave the current duty charge of additional DCP to 12 DANIPS officers, Bhagat among them. The government said the proposal for those charges began on 25 August, before the protest, and that the orders went out on 5 October after approval. Current duty charge is a temporary arrangement. It carries no financial benefit. Officers who hold it cannot exercise the statutory duties of the regular incumbent. L-G House sources told The Tribune that the move was a routine change of duty from ACP to DCP, not a promotion, and that the change for Bhagat had been stopped.

The modified order will be reissued for the other 11 officers. Bhagat stays at his existing rank while the Crime Branch inquiry runs. The allegation is that he misbehaved with a woman content creator, described in other reports as a journalist, during the central Delhi protest. The case was referred to the Crime Branch. Delhi Police have called broader assault allegations baseless. The Hindu reported that the woman journalist who made the accusation was among 17 people booked by Delhi Police, and that all 17 were granted conditional bail. A CISF constable was also reported attacked at the same protest, with one person detained.

The sequence on Monday is what made the personnel order a story. An order that included Bhagat in a batch of 12 current-duty charges was read, within hours, as a promotion for an officer under inquiry. The government then said the batch had been in train since August, that the charge is not a promotion, and that Bhagat himself had asked to be left out until the inquiry ends. Those three sentences do different work. The August start date answers the charge that the charge was invented after the protest. The no-pay rule answers the charge that he was rewarded. His request answers the charge that the government forced the upgrade through.

None of the three settles the inquiry. A current duty charge withheld is an administrative pause. It is not a finding that the allegation is true, and it is not a finding that it is false. The Crime Branch file is the place where statements, video from Jantar Mantar, and the officer's account have to be tested. Conditional bail for the 17 people booked is a court step about their liberty, not a verdict on Bhagat.

The protest itself was about the chief election commissioner and the special intensive revision, including the fight over Form 6. The personnel case has detached from that argument. What remains is a named officer, a named temporary rank he will not hold, and an inquiry the government says must finish before he can. The open date is the Crime Branch's. The government has not said when that inquiry will report, or who will decide that it has been satisfactorily concluded.