EC 'danda' continues :::
Day after transfer of over 250 govt officers, ECI removes four senior officials from Bengal CEO's office
The four officials are deputy CEO Subrata Pal, additional secretaries Narendranath Dutta and Supriya Das, and joint secretary Mithu Sarkar. The ECI transferred them following a proposal made by the state CEO.
The poll panel directed CEO Agarwal to implement the move with immediate effect on Monday afternoon, hours after the ruling Trinamool Congress MP and lawyer Kalyan Banerjee filed a case in the Calcutta High Court challenging the transfer of more than 250 state government officers.
Earlier, officers-in-charge (OCs) of 173 police stations and block development officers (BDOs) cum returning officers of 83 blocks across the state on Sunday evening because of their alleged biased role in the ongoing election process.
The removal of four senior officers from the office of the CEO has sparked controversy hardly 23 days before the first phase of polls.
Elections to the 294-member assembly will be held on April 23 and 29.
Subrata Pal had been posted as the deputy CEO in 2018, one year before the Lok Sabha elections held in 2019.
Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has been attacking the BJP and the Commission over the regular removal of top bureaucrats, IPS officers and other government officers in Bengal, after the poll body move saw her top officers losing their posts in the run-up to the high-stakes state election.
The removals included that of the chief secretary, the top bureaucratic post under the chief minister, Nandini Chakravorty, a move that she alleged was "anti-women" and "anti-Bengali".
Deletions of around 64 lakh voters from the draft electoral rolls, apart from the adjudicated cases belonging to logical discrepancy and unmapped category are the principal issues in this year's elections in West Bengal.
The BJP on Monday moved the Election Commission alleging that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and leaders of the Trinamool Congress are “intimidating” voters to deter them from backing the saffron party.
In its petition, a BJP delegation urged the poll panel to bar Banerjee from campaigning and to direct the registration of an FIR against the TMC leaders.
The delegation comprising Union ministers Kiren Rijiju, Piyush Goyal and Sukanta Majumdar, chief spokesperson Anil Baluni, and Rajya Sabha MP Arun Singh met EC officials in Delhi.
ends
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