EC seeks details of retired officers, recent transfers to ensure fair Bengal polls
Kolkata Municipal Corporation got its first woman commissioner on Wednesday when the poll body headed by CEC Gyanesh Kumar appointed Smita Pandey to the prized post.
 |
| Smita Pandey : snap - The Telegraph |
For South Kolkata, the poll panel has appointed Randhir Kumar as the district electoral officer to oversee the poll process.
The key constituency of Bhawanipore from where chief minister Mamata Banerjee will contest against the leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari will be monitored by Kumar.
Shilpa Gourisaria will be the new DM of North 24-Parganas and Abhishek Kumar Tiwary of South 24-Parganas. Another woman IAS officer Sweta Agarwal will be the DM of East Burdwan.
The EC has been worried to learn that several former chief secretaries have been reappointed in various positions, including adviser to the chief minister.
TMC always deployed officers of its choice in important positions during the elections. Several officials played a partisan role to help the ruling party.
This is the reason why the poll panel wants to check each of the appointments and postings.
“What we are witnessing is nothing short of an undeclared emergency and an unpromulgated form of President’s rule driven by political vendetta, not democratic principles,” Mamata Banerjee wrote on X.
The EC has already started transferring some newly posted officers. On Wednesday, the EC transferred the Darjeeling and Alipurduar DMs who were posted after February 28.
It has to be checked whether any of these former chief secretaries has been keeping in contact with district officials and giving them instructions to stop following the EC directives.
The EC has now asked the new chief secretary to submit a list of officers who were transferred after February 28.
Sources said the aim was to prevent Nabanna from meddling in the poll process at any cost in the interest of free and fair polls
The Election Commission has asked new Bengal chief secretary Dushyant Nariala to submit a list of state government officers and employees reemployed after their retirement in an apparent move to check if any of them have been engaged in the electoral exercise.
No retired officer or employee can be engaged in the polling process, as they cannot be held accountable in case of any malpractice. Once the list comes, the EC will check the roles of each officer and initiate necessary steps in case it finds anything suspicious.
“Many officials, including the DMs, the SDOs and the BDOs, were transferred barely days before the Assembly election dates were declared on March 15.
There is hardly any doubt that these officials were posted in the new positions according to a plan of the Mamata regime.
Once the list comes, the poll panel would verify each of the transfers. If required, they will be transferred again,” said a poll panel source.
Sources said that the transfers of these officials roughly a fortnight before the poll dates were announced drew the attention of the EC as they play an important role in conducting polls.
The DMs play the most vital role in a district as the DEO, guiding the entire election process in the district.
Officers in the SDO rank also play key roles as they are designated as returning officers of Assembly segments in a district. The BDOs, in turn, are important in managing the election machinery at the booth level.
 |
| Abhishek Banerjee had planted his loyalists too |
Then chief secretary Nandini Chakravorty and four other top civil and police officers were transferred by the EC within hours of the announcement of Assembly poll dates on March 15.
Nandini Chakravorty was appointed as CS by Mamata by superseding a number of others.
Election Commission appointed new district magistrates in 13 districts across Bengal.
Smita Pandey, an IAS officer of 2005-batch, will be the new municipal commissioner in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. She replaces Anshul Gupta.
No comments:
Post a Comment