Haider Aziz Safwi

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Haider Aziz Safwi, popularly known as 'Safwi Sahab', was an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer turned politician. He was the Deputy Speaker of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from 2016 until his death in December 2018, and previously a cabinet minister in the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) government's first term in office. He held the portfolios of Minister for Cooperation and Inland Water Transport and Minister for Correctional Administration.

Safwi retired from the IPS in 2005 as the Director General of Police in West Bengal.^[1] He held many other offices during his IPS career and was a recipient of both the President's Police Medal for distinguished service and the Police Medal for Meritorious Service. 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.

After retiring from the IPS, Safwi entered politics. He was inspired to join the TMC in 2009 by Mamata Banerjee. He had publicly stated his desire to defeat 'Buddhababu' from his home turf of Jadavpur, in the 2011 Assembly Elections, as the main aim of his political career. However, following an intervention by the TMC Supremo, Safwi was allotted a different constituency owing to his rapport with TMC MP Sultan Ahmed. 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 Buddhababu from his own seat of Jadavpur. Safwi was inducted as a cabinet minister in the Mamata Banerjee government on 20 May 2011. He was allotted the portfolios of Co-operation and Inland Water Transport. 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.

Safwi later moved to the Correctional Administration (Prisons) Department. He had requested this shift as he wanted a department which was more in line with his history as an IPS officer. The move had significant political ramifications and was widely discussed in the press as it was believed that Safwi had been resisting political pressure from the co-operative lobbies in the state. It was widely believed that Safwi wanted a change in portfolio since he was not willing to bow down to vested interests, many of whom were putting pressure on the department to reduce the tenure of co-operative societies from the existing tenure of 5 years to three years. As Prisons minister, he introduced a number of rehabilitation courses for the prisoners as he harped on prison-time being a period of self reflection and correction rather than only punishment. He established open-correctional homes for prisoners, a largely new concept in India until then, as well as the system of departmental medals in line with the police system of departmental medals for officers. Three new open-correctional homes were established in his tenure and a system was put in place to remove political pressure in postings, as well as a system of three time shifts for the staff. He once remarked ‘Don’t ever think that I can be threatened by unions’ during an interaction with officers.

In 2016, Safwi was renominated by the TMC from the Uluberia Purba seat and retained it by a margin of 16,269 votes. He was called ‘Uluberiar Roopkar’ (Man who built Uluberia). His two terms saw the building of Uluberia Stadium, Uluberia Railway-Over-Bridge (ROB), Uluberia Super Speciality Hospital, Bauria Drinking Water Project in addition to road building, drainage, street lights, CCTV in schools, public toilets, and re-development of cremation facilities and burial ground facilities.

He was elected unanimously as the Deputy Speaker of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. His shift from the Cabinet to the post of Deputy Speaker was largely due to his non-controversial image and experience in administration. He stuck to the rule book in controversial matters pertaining to the conduct of the house.

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.