KOLKATA: Ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal moved the Calcutta High Court challenging the Election Commission of India (ECI) against transferring several IAS and IPS officers in the State.
The Trinamool Congress MP and senior lawyer Kalyan Banerjee filed a petition in the HC raising questions over the national poll panel’s transfer orders of several bureaucrats, including the State chief secretary, home secretary and other IPS officers like director general of police (DGP) and commissioner of police, Kolkata after the announcement of poll dates in Bengal by the CEC in Delhi on Sunday.
The petitioner named the CEC a party respondent in the matter.
Mentioning the matter before a Division Bench presided by Chief Justice Sujoy Paul, the lawyer prayed for an early hearing of the petition.
The petition, which questions the transfers without consulting the State government before the ECI took the decisions, is likely to be heard early next week, a lawyer aware of the matter said.
The elections to the 294-member West Bengal Assembly will be held in two phases on April 23 and 29. Votes will be counted on May 4.
Hours after slamming the ECI on X post on Thursday afternoon, Mamata, in a formal letter to Kumar the same day evening, accused him of crossing all boundaries of decency and constitutional propriety with his whiplash transfers of IAS and IPS officers of Bengal, suggesting a deliberate attempt to push the State into administrative instability and disorder.
"The situation resembled an Emergency or indirect central rule, and the poll panel’s actions showed a clear bias and an uncomfortable submission to political interests", her latest letter to the CEC stated.
She said the 'unilateral' replacement of the chief secretary, home secretary and police chiefs alongside dozens of others in the police and civil administrations, including district magistrates, amounted to direct interference in the state’s affairs.
Earlier, she had attacked the ECI for overnight transfers of the top bureaucrats and police officers.
Sharpening her attacks on the Commission, the CM wrote on X post said, “The manner in which the Election Commission has singled out and targeted Bengal is not just unprecedented, it is deeply alarming."
"Even before the formal notification of elections, more than 50 senior officials, including the Chief Secretary, Home Secretary, DGP, ADGs, IGs, DIGs, District Magistrates and Superintendents of Police, have been summarily and arbitrarily removed. This is not an administrative action; rather, this is political interference of the highest order,” she stated.