KOLKATA: The Election Commission of India (ECI) asked the West Bengal chief secretary (CS) Nandini Chakraborty to lodge FIRs against the four errant government officers, including two West Bengal Civil Service (WBCS) executives, by 17 February.
ECI also sought her clarifications on why several directives from the hadn’t been adhered to.
The move came hours after its full Bench, headed by the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, during a virtual conference on Friday, pulled up the District Electoral Officers (DEOs) as well as District Magistrates (DMs), other poll officials in the State.
Nandini rushed to Delhi on Friday evening after getting a summon from the ECI at Nirvachan Sadan.
Sources said the chief secretary appeared before the full Bench of the ECI to explain why the poll panel’s directives could not be implemented so far.
The poll body also warned them of prosecutions after many anomalies were detected in the uploading and verification of documents submitted by voters during hearings of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the State.
During September last year, the national poll panel had asked the State government to lodge FIRs against four officers, former Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) of the Baruipur Purba and Moyna Assembly segments, respectively, in South 24 Parganas and East Midnapore districts for enrolling fictitious voters.
The State government has suspended them, and departmental proceedings have also been initiated, but no FIR has been lodged against them.
The ECI had also asked the State to initiate departmental proceedings and lodge an FIR against the BDO of Basirhat II for appointing 11 additional AEROs to conduct hearings without the ECI’s approval.
The government had been directed to revoke transfer orders of three IAS officers, Smita Pandey, Randhir Kumar and Asnhwini Kumar Yadav, after they had been appointed as district electoral roll observers.
“None of the directives had been implemented, and that is why the chief secretary has been summoned to explain the reasons behind the state’s stance. She was asked to implement the orders immediately during an hour-long meeting at Nirvachan Sadan,” sources said, requesting anonymity.
On the other hand, the conflict between the state secretariat Nabanna and the ECI over the list of 8005 Group B officers sent by the state government intensified further on Saturday.
Sources in the Commission primarily felt that the list had a majority of the names that were not of officers and were of the employees belonging to clerical categories.
Notably, they highlighted that the Supreme Court had clearly mentioned that the state should send 8,505 Group B officers/officials on deputation to the ECI.
