KOLKATA: After removing the chief secretary and home secretary from the West Bengal state secretariat Nabanna, senior IPS officers like director general of police (DGP) and commissioner of police, Kolkata, and a host of government officers during the past month, the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday transferred four senior officers from the office of the state CEO Manoj Agarwal over alleged partisanship ahead of the assembly polls in the state.
The four officials are deputy CEO Subrata Pal, additional secretaries Narendranath Dutta and Supriya Das, and joint secretary Mithu Sarkar. The ECI was prompted to transfer them following a proposal made by the state CEO Manoj Agarwal.
The national poll body directed Agarwal to implement the move with immediate effect on Monday afternoon, hours after the ruling Trinamool Congress MP and lawyer Kalyan Banerjee filed a case in the Calcutta High Court challenging the transfer of more than 250 state government officers like officers-in-charge (OCs) of 173 police stations and block development officers (BDOs) cum returning officers of 83 blocks across the state on Sunday evening because of their alleged biased role in the ongoing election process.
The removal of four senior officers from the office of the CEO has sparked controversy hardly 23 days before the first phase of polls in the state. Elections in 294 assembly constituencies in the state will be held on April 23 and 29. Sources in the state CEO office said that Subrata Pal had been posted as the deputy CEO in 2018, one year before the Lok Sabha elections held in 2019.
Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has been attacking the BJP and the Commission over the regular removal of top bureaucrats, IPS officers and other government officers in Bengal, after the poll body move saw her top officers losing their posts in the run-up to the high-stakes state election.
The removals included that of the chief secretary, the top bureaucratic post under the chief minister, Nandini Chakravorty, a move that she alleged was "anti-women" and "anti-Bengali".
Banerjee had alleged that the decision was taken by the ECI at the behest of the opposition BJP. "You have removed (my) officers and put those of the BJP's choice on duty," the chief minister had claimed at a rally.
She has also recently alleged that administrative power had been “snatched” from her hands through the removal of so many officers by the Commission.
With the regular removal of so many administrative officers, including the transfer of the four from the CEO office, and deletions of around 64 lakh voters from the draft electoral rolls, apart from the adjudicated cases belonging to logical discrepancy and unmapped category, supporters of the ruling party assembled in front of the newly shifted CEO office in the Shipping Corporation building along the Strand Road later this evening to protest against the Commission. Senior party leaders took part in the protest.
