Kapoor was on Thursday convened his transfer on promotion telephonically and was asked to take the charge on Friday morning.

Sangle had invited the wrath of Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde and a few devotes from Pandharpur after he ordered removal of saffron flags atop some muths in the temple town.

This was the first time that a deity has got embroiled in a controversy over implementation of the election code of conduct in Maharashtra.

Annoyed over Sangle's action, the EC had directed the Maharashtra Government to immediately transfer him.

An inquiry conducted by the EC found that Sangle had not ordered removal of the flags atop the Pandharpur temple but saffron flags atop a few muths in Pandharpur, an official communique had said.

Kapoor, an Indian Administrative Service officer from the 1991 batch took over his assignment in Pune in September 1997. Earlier, he had served as chief executive officer of Bhandara Zilla Parishad.

Radical steps to curb octroi evasion, especially by the bullion traders and ready-made clothe merchants remained the major task of Kapoor's 23 month's stay in Pune. The Pune Municipal Corporation's orctori recepits went up galloping after he resorted to his anti-octroi evader flying squads and an all-women-squad to check the octroi-avoiding members of fair sex. He also had taken keen interest in revamping the civic health and sanitation department.

Speaking to reporters this evening, Kapoor stated that he was happy about his stay in Pune.

RPI to go alone in Assembly polls
Satara: Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is likely to face a major predicament with local leaders of the Republican Party of India (RPI) (Athawale) - announcing that they would contest from all the ten Assembly segments in Satara.

The move was stated to be a sequel to NCP denying to allot one of the reserved constituencies to the RPI (A).

According to RPI (A) Satara district unit chief Ashok Gaikwad, the party was capable of defeating any candidate with it commanding 30 per cent chunk of votes in each of the Assembly segments. This could prove decisive, he claimed.

`Phones to all by December'
Satara: Satara Telecom chief general manager H Sundareshan recently assured that the backlog in telephone connections would be cleared by December this year. He was speaking after releasing the 1998-99 telephone directory, recently.