The Election Commission has set six goals for the DEOs, including the prevention of violence and voter intimidation through the proper deployment of central forces.
The district Electoral Officers (DEOs) have been asked to try and make the elections free from any political influence and take care of bogus or proxy voting, booth jamming and intimidation in the catchment areas of the booths on polling day.
Bungalow axe for removed DMs: EC cracks down on election interference
The rejig of senior bureaucrats and police officers reached Calcutta High Court on Friday, with the state government challenging the poll panel’s authority to send them to other states.
The Election Commission on Friday directed the newly appointed district magistrates to get their predecessors to vacate their official bungalows so they can put up there.
The directive was a clear signal from the Gyanesh Kumar-led poll panel that it would not tolerate any interference in the election process by the 11 DMs it had removed recently.
Gyanesh Kumar had earlier warned senior officials, including then chief secretary Nandini Chakravorty and then DGP Piyush Pandey, --- two blue-eyed officials of Mamata --- not to interfere in the election process and to allow the district officials to work in keeping with the poll panel’s directives.
The commission also felt that the SIR could not be completed on time only because of interference from some top bureaucrats and their political bosses.
(At Eid prayers, Mamata Banerjee accuses BJP of ‘snatching voting rights’ in West Bengal)
“When you (Modi) shake hands abroad, you seem to forget everything. When you return to India, the Hindu-Muslim narrative begins again. You then call for deleting names, labelling people as infiltrators. I would say you are the biggest infiltrator," says Mamata
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The EC instructions came during a videoconference attended by poll panel officials, chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal and all the district election officers or DEOs (district magistrates).
The Election Commission had replaced 11 district magistrates on Wednesday without consulting the Bengal government. It has sent five of them to Tamil Nadu as poll observers.
The rejig of senior bureaucrats and police officers reached Calcutta High Court on Friday, with the state government challenging the poll panel’s authority to send them to other states. A division bench headed by Chief Justice Sujoy Paul is likely to hear the matter on Monday.
A senior official said the poll panel had replaced several DMs during the 2021 Assembly polls and the 2024 general election following allegations they were playing a “partisan” role.
But these DMs continued to occupy their bungalows, allegedly on instructions from the state government’s top brass. Such an arrangement sent out a clear message that the ruling dispensation would transfer the newly appointed DMs after the elections. Using this ruse, the predecessors continued to instruct the officials conducting the elections.
The Election Commission is actually more than serious about preventing this kind of interference this time. The poll panel has since the beginning of the election process taken a tough stance on state officials seen as close to the ruling party.
Trinamool’s reply to the EC’s actions — a formal protest letter from Mamata Banerjee — is revealing precisely because of its register.
"Actions of this nature risk creating an atmosphere akin to an emergency or indirect central rule, which is deeply concerning and unfortunate. They undermine the spirit of cooperative federalism,” she wrote.
The language is that of a leader making a constitutional argument because the political argument is no longer working.
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