Election Commission Removes 267 Officials from West Bengal CEO Office Amid Controversy

On the proposal of Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal, four heavyweight WBCS officers (CEO Office Shuffle WB) have been removed from his office. These include Additional Secretary level Narendranath Dutta and Supriyo Das, Joint Secretary Mithu Dutta and Deputy CEO Subrata Paul. Additional Secretary Health Rahul Nath has been appointed as Joint CEO. It is to be noted that the Election Commission has removed 267 officials of the state in an unprecedented manner in the last few days. Among them are OCs and BDOs of high-voltage centres like Nandigram and Bhabanipur. Advocate Kalyan Banerjee on Monday moved the Calcutta High Court against this action of the Commission. The state government claims that the transfer is being done unilaterally without following the usual practice. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has already written a strong letter to the Chief Election Commissioner of the country Gyanesh Kumar. She has alleged that the reshuffle is actually being done by the BJP government by keeping the state in the dark.