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Bengal elections: Reshuffle of top officials, cops by ECI triggers political slugfest
The ECI ordered the removal of Bengal's two top bureaucrats, chief secretary Nandini Chakravorty and home secretary Jagdish Prasad Meena.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday transferred four top Indian Police Service (IPS) officers in West Bengal, including state’s Director General of Police (DGP) Peeyush Pandey and Kolkata commissioner of police Supratim Sarkar, with the move triggering a political slugfest in the eastern state ahead of the assembly polls.
The development comes a day after ECI announced the poll schedule for West Bengal, which will go to polls in two phases on April 23 and April 29, and hours after the commission ordered the removal of the state’s two top bureaucrats, chief secretary Nandini Chakravorty and home secretary Jagdish Prasad Meena.
ECI said its directions are to be implemented with immediate effect. “...the officers transferred out shall not be posted in any election-related posts till the completion of elections,” the orders, signed by commission secretary Sujeet Kr Mishra, said.
The poll panel on Sunday night appointed 1993-batch IAS officer Dushyant Nariala as the West Bengal’s chief secretary, and 1997-batch IAS officer Sanghamitra Ghosh as home secretary.
In its order transferring the state’s top police officers, ECI appointed 1992-batch IPS officer Siddh Nath Gupta as the DGP, and brought in Ajay Kumar Nand, 1996-batch IPS officer, as the new commissioner of Kolkata Police.
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ECI also replaced ADG (law and order) Vineet Goyal with 1995-batch IPS officer Ajay Mukund Ranade and appointed Natarajan Ramesh Babu, a 1991-batch IPS officer, as director general (correctional services), in place of Siddh Nath Gupta, who held that position before the transfers.
“The Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, in his press conference on Sunday, had assured that elections in West Bengal would be violence-free and peaceful. In pursuance of this objective, ECI has appointed and transferred senior police officials in the state, including the DGP and CP of Kolkata police,” a senior ECI official said.
ECI transferring top IAS/IPS officers of West Bengal as individual cases ahead of the polls has several precedents, but this is perhaps the first time the poll panel has transferred the chief secretary, home secretary, DGP, Kolkata CP and the ADG (law and order) at one go and forbidding them to take part in poll activities.
The orders, which come amid the chief minister Mamata Banerjee-led government’s criticism of the poll body over the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state, triggered a political row in the state.
The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the poll panel, saying the move reflected their “panic” ahead of the polls.
“They have changed the Governor, the first woman chief secretary of the state, the DGP and other senior IAS and IPS officials. These are all panic reactions of the BJP and ECI, which is a wing of the BJP. They may do whatever backdoor politics and misuse the powers of the poll panel but they won’t be able to change the connection Mamata Banerjee shares with the people of West Bengal,” TMC leader Kunal Ghosh told reporters. “The BJP will get a befitting reply after the counting day.”
The BJP defended the ECI’s decisions.
“The entire state administration in West Bengal is highly politicised. It is not the West Bengal government but the TMC government which is running the state. The issue is not how many officers have been transferred. The issue is to hold free and fair polls. ECI is trying to ensure that,” state BJP chief Samik Bhattacharya told reporters.
The issue also echoed in Parliament Complex on Monday.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav told reporters: “Whenever elections are held, and if the state government is not run by the party ruling in Delhi, the first thing they do is remove the DGP and the chief secretary...”
Hitting back, Union minister Giriraj Singh said: “The TMC has no future in West Bengal. They may shout as much as they want, but people will not allow Bengal to become Bangladesh.”
(With agency inputs)
