RAIPUR: The Election Commission of India (ECI) in a significant move had issued a directive to the Chhattisgarh government to shift eight officials including two collectors and three district police chiefs with an instruction that they should not be given any election-related responsibility.
The Commission has further asked the chief secretary to make available a panel of three officers for each of the eight vacant posts by Thursday evening.
The state’s General Administration Department transferred Raigarh collector Taran Prakash Sinha and Bilaspur collector Sanjeev Jha to the secretariat as joint secretaries.
The state home department issued an order to shift Rajnandgaon SP Abhishek Meena. Korba SP Uday Kiran and Durg SP Shalabh Sinha to the police headquarters. Bilaspur additional SP Abhishek Maheshwari and Durg additional SP Sanjay Dhruv were transferred as Assistant Inspector General in the PHQ.
The districts where these officials were posted are said to have several high-profile constituencies.
A 1995-batch Indian Telecom Service officer Manoj Soni who was special secretary for food and civil supplies was also removed.
According to the sources familiar with the development, the ECI took the decision owing to inputs it got during the Chhattisgarh visit and the alleged objection raised that the officials not showing result-oriented works related to the polls besides other purported dissatisfaction against them.
Chattisgarh will witness two-phase Assembly polls on November 7 and 17.