KOLKATA: The ECI on Wednesday removed five top IPS officers in the rank of deputy inspector generals (DIG) of police and 11 district magistrates (DMs) in West Bengal.
The DMs are also taking up the role of the district electoral officers ahead of the Assembly elections.
The move comes despite the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee writing a letter written to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, urging him to refrain from adopting such unilateral measures in the future.
Sujeet Kumar Mishra, ECI secretary, has written to the Bengal Chief Secretary (CS) Dushyant Nariala to post Rathod Amitkumar Bharat, Ajeet Singh Yadav, Srihari Pandey, Kankar Prasad Barui and Anjali Singh in five ranges, Raiganj, Murshidabad, Bardhaman, Presidency and Jalpaiguri, respectively.
The DIGs will be replacing their five counterparts, Nimbalkar Santosh Uttamrao, Sudhirkumar Nilakantam, Alok Rajoria, Bholanath Pandey and Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay.
They are to be posted in the same ranges with immediate effect by March 19.
Harishankar Panicker, T Balasubramanian, Jitin Yadav, Sandip Ghosh, Vivek Kumar, Rajanvir Singh Kapur, R Arjun, Srikant Palli, Sweta Agarwal, Shilpa Gourisaria, Abhishek Kumar Tiwari, Smita Pandey and Randhir Kumar have been appointed as new DMs as well as DEOs in Darjeeling, Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Uttar Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, Purba Bardhaman, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas districts.
The poll agency also directed that all the transferred officers would not be given any portfolio related to polls until the completion of the upcoming Assembly elections.
Protesting against the removal of top officers, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata had on Monday night earlier written to the CEC saying, "It is a matter of deep concern and surprise that the heads of the administrative machinery in the State of West Bengal were removed within hours of the press release announcing the General Election to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, 2026."
"This has been done arbitrarily, without seeking a panel of officers from the State Government and without adhering to the established convention that had guided the ECI-State institutional functioning during previous elections. It also undermines the spirit of cooperative federalism and principles of our democratic polity that form a basic feature of constitutional governance.”
Tightening its grip over West Bengal, the ECI had ordered a major reshuffle at the top administrative posts, just hours after the announcement of the Assembly polls in the State on Sunday.
Shortly after the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) came into place, the ECI had ordered the replacement of the Chief Secretary, Home Secretary and top police officials in the State.
The ECI had replaced CS Nandini Chakraborty with Dushyant Nariala, a 1993 batch IAS officer. Sanghamitra Ghosh had been appointed the new HS, replacing Jagdish Prasad Meena.
Ghosh is a 1997-batch IAS officer and Bengal's first female HS.
The ECI had also replaced top police officials, including DGP Peeyush Pandey and Kolkata Commissioner of Police (CP) Supratim Sarkar.
The poll panel directed the State government to appoint Siddh Nath Gupta as Director General and Inspector General of Police (in-charge), while Natarajan Ramesh Babu has been named Director General of Correctional Services.
It also ordered the posting of Ajay Mukund Ranade as Additional Director General and IGP (Law and Order) and Ajay Kumar Nand as Commissioner of Kolkata Police.
West Bengal is one of the most highly sensitive states in terms of violence and arson during the pre and post polls period. Senior bureaucrats in the State remarked that the removal of the CS was unprecedented in the history of West Bengal since its independence.
According to political observers, the removal of the top-notch bureaucrats hinted at the tightening grip of the national poll body over officers accused of playing partisan roles in the election process.
