Hours before resigning, Uddhav Thackeray appointed IPS officer Vivek Phansalkar as new Mumbai Police chief

Hours before resigning as Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray Wednesday appointed senior IPS officer Vivek Phansalkar as the new Mumbai Police Commissioner.

A 1989-batch IPS officer, Phansalkar was serving as the DG and MD of the Police Housing and Welfare Corporation, before his appointment as the Mumbai CP.

He will succeed incumbent commissioner of police Sanjay Pandey who is retiring on Thursday.

Earlier, Phansalkar had served Maharashtra Police in various key capacities including Thane commissioner of police and Maharashtra ATS chief.

Thackeray's announcement to step down as chief minister came minutes after the Supreme Court refused to stay the Maharashtra Governor's direction to the Maha Vikas Aghadi government led by the Sena chief to take a floor test in the assembly on Thursday.

Thackeray, who heads the Shiv Sena, appealed to Sena workers to allow the rebel legislators to return and not take to the streets in protest.

The rebels, earlier in the evening, left Guwahati where they were camping for over a week, and landed in Goa.

The BJP is set to form the next government in the state with the support from Sena rebels led by Eknath Shinde and several independents who had earlier backed the government of Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance.

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