Jaipur: Heads have started rolling, this time from the top, in Ashok Gehlot government which is facing heat over its administrative failure to control Gopalgarh riots. In a small but important bureaucratic reshuffle on Thursday, Gehlot showed the door to additional chief secretary (home) PK Deb and replaced him with GS Sandhu who heads the Urban Development and Housing department.

The government also got its crisis man, deputy Inspector general of police, Anand Srivastava, back in Bharatpur by shunting out Sunil Dutt who was serving as Bharatpur Range IG. The government did not immediately assign Dutt any responsibility and asked him to await posting orders (APO).

Members of two communities clashed with each other over a land dispute in Gopalgarh, Bharatpur on September 14. Ten people lost their lives in the violent clashes in which police contributed to the deaths by opening fire on locals. The shoddy handling of the crisis had the Gehlot government neck-deep in trouble with criticism raining from the opposition, the civil societies and even office bearers of the Congress party.

Gehlot fell back on his trusted lieutenant principal secretary GS Sandhu, an IAS officer of 1980-batch, to tide him through the troubled times. Sandhu who was appointed as the principal secretary UDH since Gehlot's return to power was never touched in any of the bureaucratic reshuffles, until now. By elevating him to the home department, Gehlot has tried to mend fences after rioting in Gopalgarh ripped the government apart.

Srivastava was brought back into the mainstream administration for his know-how on Bharatpur where he served as the superintendent of police and tackled the Gurjar agitation.

The state government has already suspended IAS Krishna Kunal who was the Bharatpur collector and Superintendent of police Hinglaj Dan.