Kamal Ghorui
KOLKATA: Within three days of announcing poll dates on March 15, Election Commission (EC) has transferred 60 senior IAS and IPS officers in Bengal. Seventeen of them were named election observers in other states.In latest orders since the Model Code of Conduct came into force, EC Wednesday transferred 13 IAS officers, who were serving as district election officers (DEOs), and 20 IPS officers. Among the 13 were the DEOs of Kolkata North and Kolkata South electoral districts.
Two of the IPS officers – Murlidhar Sharma and Waquar Raza – were named poll observers for Tamil Nadu. Sharma is the commissioner of Bidhannagar City Police, while Raza took over as the head of the Siliguri commissionerate a couple of days ago. Five IAS officers sent to other states as poll observers are JP Meena (removed from the post of home secretary Sunday), Antara Acharya, Parwez Ahmed Siddiqui, P Mohan Gandhi and Priyanka Singla.While govt functionaries had been routinely shifted in the run-up to polls, the sheer number of transfers before the 2026 polls made the current exercise unprecedented, officials said. Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee wrote to CEC Gyanesh Kumar, asking why EC bypassed the convention of seeking a panel of three names from state govt to fill each post affected by the transfers.
