The face-off between the Mamata Banerjee government in Bengal and the Election Commission of India (ECI) seems to be getting murkier as the poll approaches, with the ECI appointing 15 IAS and 10 IPS officers from the state as Central Election Observers for the five poll-bound states—West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry.
What insinuates at the escalation of tensions between the two is the fact that among the IAS officers named as central poll observers is West Bengal’s Home Secretary, Jagdeesh Prasad Meena. Appointing a Home Secretary of a poll-bound state as a central election observer outside his home state is a rare move that the ECI has taken in the case of Bengal.
These officers have also been asked to attend a mandatory two-day orientation programme scheduled for February 5 and 6 in New Delhi at the India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management, in the presence of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Interestingly, West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal dashed off a letter on January 27 warning officers of strong disciplinary action against any of them who skip the training programme in Delhi.
A senior official at the Bengal secretariat said the government is contemplating sending a reply to the Commission protesting against this move.
If sources in the ECI are to be believed, the poll body had repeatedly asked the West Bengal government to recommend names of IAS and IPS officers from the state for appointment as poll observers in other states, but the government is alleged to have sat on it.
This is not all; the Commission is said to have written at least five letters to the state secretariat, Nabanna, reminding it to send a list of officers since November, failing which the Commission sent a letter directly to Agarwal.
This is not the lone action on the part of the Commission to put the Bengal govt in a fix. Just on Tuesday, the poll body asked the state government to revoke the transfer of three IAS officers deputed as electoral roll observers for the Special Intensive Review (SIR) exercise—Ashwini Kumar Yadav, Randhir Kumar, and Smita Pandey. The battle continues.
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