Retired IPS officer and former Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Pandey joined the Congress party on Thursday, accompanied by Mumbai Congress chief Varsha Gaikwad. Pandey is expected to run for an Assembly seat in Mumbai, targeting areas with a significant north Indian population. A 1986-batch IPS officer, Pandey's career has been marked by controversy. He was arrested by central agencies in June 2022 in connection with the National Stock Exchange phone-tapping case and was released on bail five months later. Since then, he has expressed his political ambitions. In July, Pandey announced his intention to contest the upcoming Assembly elections. "I have been interested in joining politics for a long time but didn't have the opportunity earlier. I also tried to run for the Lok Sabha, but that didn't materialise. Now, I have decided to contest the assembly elections from the Versova seat," he stated. He had previously considered running for the Lok Sabha from the Mumbai-North West seat as an independent candidate, but later withdrew. Pandey was appointed Mumbai Police Commissioner on February 18, 2022, and retired from service on June 30 the same year. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur, he faced significant legal challenges when he was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in July and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in September 2022 related to the NSE phone-tapping case, spending nearly five months in custody. He was granted bail in the money-laundering case by the Delhi High Court on December 8, 2022.
