Hours before the Election Commission's (EC) expected announcement of the schedule for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in several states, including West Bengal, the state government on Monday notified a bulk rejig of over 200 bureaucrats and senior officials across districts.
As many as 61 IAS and 145 WBCS (Executive) officers were shuffled by the Personnel and Administrative Reforms (P&AR) department of the West Bengal government, making it one of the largest single-batch transfers in recent times.
The reshuffle included ten District Magistrates (DMs), multiple special secretary-ranked officers, several Officers-on-Special Duty (OSDs), and a host of Additional District Magistrates (ADMs) and Sub-Divisional Officers (SDOs) from both the IAS and WBCS cadres.
The Managing Director of the Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO), the Municipal Commissioner of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, and the Chief Executive Officer of the Haldia Development Authority also featured among those transferred.
The list of transferred DMs comprises those of North and South 24 Parganas, Cooch Behar, Murshidabad, Purulia, Darjeeling, Malda, Birbhum, Jhargram, and Purba Medinipur districts.
An official noted that the personnel in question are expected to play nodal roles in the upcoming SIR exercise, and it would become untenable for the state government to make further reshuffles once the EC schedule is formally announced.
While the political opposition in the state alleged that the move was an attempt by the Mamata Banerjee administration to thwart the upcoming SIR exercise, the ruling TMC (Trinamool Congress) dismissed the notifications as merely "routine."
"Mamata Banerjee is sensing trouble for her party once this exercise is successfully completed and a large number of fake voters are deleted from the electoral rolls. She is, hence, trying everything in her hand to disturb the process by making such last-minute bulk transfers," BJP leader Sajal Ghosh alleged.
Rubbishing the accusation, TMC IT cell head Debangshu Bhattacharya said the BJP is "clutching at straws" to level wild allegations. "Such transfers take place in the government as a routine measure across the year. There's no reason why one should draw a connection between this and the SIR announcement," he said.
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