KOLKATA: The suspension of seven Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) from six assembly segments in West Bengal have caused speculation that the state secretariat Nabanna might have given verbal clearance to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to take the decision.
The ECI on Sunday night suspended the seven AEROs after holding them guilty of allegedly including several ineligible persons in the post-Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state.
Some senior West Bengal Civil Service (WBCS) officers suspected that Nabanna, instead of taking any direct steps against their seven colleagues, virtually shifted its responsibility to the Commission, which has constitutional power to take action against any errant official involved in poll process.
Requesting anonymity, the senior Bengal civil service executives said that the national poll suspended the AEROs on Sunday night, couple of days after the state chief secretary (CS) Nandini Chakraborty was summoned by the Commission at Nirvachan Sadan in Delhi on Friday.
Nandini rushed to Delhi on Friday evening and appeared before the full bench of the EC to explain why the poll panel’s directives could not be implemented so far.
Sources in the Commission said, “Besides lodging FIRs against four government officers by the deadline 17 February she has also been asked to implement several other directives issued by the Commission earlier.”
The ECI on Friday asked Nandini to lodge FIRs against the four government officers including two WBCS executives by 17 February.
The 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 had allegedly enrolled fictitious voters last year.
Santanu Mukherjee, state secretary of the WBCS Association, was not available for comment. Sources said, for the first time the ECI suspended the seven poll-duty officials directly in Bengal instead of recommending such punitive action to the state government.
Poll panel sources said the revelation that some AEROs had allowed ineligible names on the rolls had hung a cloud on the publication of the final rolls on February 28.
The seven AEROs — two from Canning Purbo in South 24-Parganas and one each from Suti, Samserganj and Farakka in Murshidabad, Moynaguri in Jalpaiguri and Debra in West Midnapore — have been suspended with immediate effect.
“It was found during a random review of cases approved for inclusion in the final rolls that these AEROs had given their clearance to several applicants despite insufficient and ineligible documents. These officers failed to take corrective actions even though the roll observers pointed out the mistakes. The EC had to initiate action against them to ensure the publication of error-free rolls,” said a poll panel official.
The sources in the poll panel said several other officers were under the scanner as there were complaints that ineligible individuals were being approved for inclusion in the final rolls.
“The national poll panel had made it clear during a videoconference with the District Electoral Officers (DEOs) that all such cases should be taken off the system by Monday. If such cases continue to be on the database after Monday, more officers will face stringent action,” a source said.