4 officers of CEO West Bengal Office Shifted

Kolkata: On the heels of an unprecedented bureaucratic reshuffle by the Election Commission in the Mamata Banerjee government ahead of the Assembly Election in West Bengal, heads are now rolling at the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) in West Bengal.

On Monday, four key officials in the poll agency faced transfer to different departments as per West Bengal CEO Manoj Agarwal’s instructions. They were deputy CEO Subrata Pal, two additional secretaries, Narendra Nath Dutta and Supriya Das, and joint secretary Mithu Sarkar.

All of them are West Bengal Civil Service (WBCS) officers from various batches. It is not yet known why they were shifted from the CEO office. Their new appointments were announced by the state government in a notification.

Mr. Pal has been appointed senior deputy secretary of the state health department. He had been serving as deputy CEO since 2018. On the other hand, Kallol Nath, additional secretary of the health department, has been appointed as the joint CEO of West Bengal.

Among others, Mr. Dutta has been posted as additional secretary in the state labor department, while Mr. Das has been posted as additional secretary in the food processing industries and horticulture department.

Mr. Sarkar has been appointed as joint secretary of minority affairs and madrasa education department. Within hours of the transfer, chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s MP nephew Abhishek Banerjee and two state ministers, Chandrima Bhattacharya and Shashi Panja, met Mr. Agarwal over the alleged fake applications for deletion of voters’ names in form 6 by the BJP.

TMC supporters also staged a demonstration outside the CEO’s office in West Bengal, leading to the deployment of central forces in the evening. Mr. Banerjee later attacked the BJP for its dubious role.