KOLKATA: The Election Commission of India (ECI), in an unprecedented move, has removed the Chief Secretary and the Home Secretary of the election-bound West Bengal, just hours after the announcement of Assembly polls in the state, on Sunday.
The ECI has replaced CS Nandini Chakraborty with Dushyant Nariala, a 1993 batch IAS officer. Sanghamitra Ghosh has been appointed the new HS, replacing Jagdish Prasad Meena. Ghosh is a 1997-batch IAS officer and Bengal's first female HS.
ECI secretary Surjeet Kumar Mishra directed the changes in a written to Chakraborty late on Sunday night, after the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) came into place.
The poll agency also directed that both Chakraborty and Meena would not be given any portfolio related to polls till the upcoming Assembly elections are over.
Meanwhile, sources in the ECI said the poll agency is also likely to remove top police officials, including DGP Peeyush Pandey, additional DGP (Law and Order) Vineet Goyal and Kolkata Commissioner of Police (CP) Supratim Sarkar. The decision will be announced on Monday, sources said.
The ECI on Sunday afternoon announced the election schedule for Bengal, which will go to the polls in two phases, on April 23 and 29. West Bengal is one of the most highly sensitive states in terms of violence and arsons during the pre- and post-polls period.
Some senior serving and retired bureaucrats in the state felt that the removal of the CS was unprecedented in the history of West Bengal since the Independence.
Political observers felt that the removal of the two top notch bureaucrats shows that the national poll body won’t spare any officers if they are found playing partisan rolls in election process.
There has been large scale resentments among senior bureaucrats against the Mamata Banerjee government’s policy to allegedly appoint junior IAS and IPS officers in important posts in the administration.
For instance, the government had appointed Meena as HS, who is seven years junior to Ghosh, who was the secretary in the state women and child welfare development department, in service.
Nariala was the secretary in the state disaster management department.