Amid a bureaucratic churn, Maha’s chief poll officer shunted out by EC

S Chockalingam, a 1996 batch IAS officer and director general of Yashada, will take over from Deshpande, an ECI order said. Chockalingam was picked from a list of three IAS officers sent by the state government about a month ago. Deshpande will retire on April 30

A day after the Election Commission of India (ECI) turned down the Eknath Shinde-led government’s plea, which had requested an exemption of BMC commissioner IS Chahal among other senior civic officials from transfers, the poll panel on Wednesday shunted out state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Shrikant Deshpande.

Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Shrikant Deshpande.

Officials at Mantralaya, however, said the sudden change in guard, a few weeks before an announcement on Lok Sabha polls, had nothing to do with the ongoing transfers of municipal commissioners.

“The state government had requested (the ECI through Deshpande) to exempt a few municipal commissioners, including Chahal, additional commissioners P Velrasu and Ashwini Bhide, Akola municipal commissioner Kavita Dwivedi, and Pune municipal commissioner Vikram Kumar. The ECI rejected the request, making the transfers inevitable. The state government was keen on retaining these officials in their existing posts, but the officials in the CEO and the ECI put their foot down on implementation of the guidelines,” an official said.

S Chockalingam, a 1996 batch IAS officer and director general of Yashada, will take over from Deshpande, an ECI order said. Chockalingam was picked from a list of three IAS officers sent by the state government about a month ago. Deshpande will retire on April 30. Apart from Chockalingam, the ECI has appointed 2009 batch IAS officer Kiram Kulkarni as additional CEO.

Another official admitted that Deshpande’s transfer came as a surprise. “We were expecting the transfer three months ago since the incumbent CEO is retiring on April 30 when the LS polls are expected to be at the peak. Since an extension to an IAS officer other than chief secretary is rare, an extension to Deshpande was unexpected. It would not have been appropriate to appoint a new CEO at that juncture taking the risk of goof-ups in the election process. However, the transfer at this juncture when the announcement on the polls is just a few days away is also surprising.”

On Wednesday, Deshpande was on a tour of Solapur and Sangli to review the poll preparations.

As per the ECI guidelines, officers completing three years in a post or in the same district in different posts need to be transferred during elections.

Chockalingam has been posted in Pune since August 2010 in various positions, including director of land records, divisional commissioner, and inspector general of registration.