The Election Commission on Tuesday transferred the joint block development officer of Falta in South 24 Parganas district, a day ahead of the second phase of Assembly polls in West Bengal, PTI reported.
The officer, Sourav Hazra, was transferred to Purulia, where polling concluded on April 23. In Falta, he was replaced by Ramya Bhattacharya.
No reason for the transfer was cited in the Election Commission’s orders, PTI reported. The news agency quoted an unidentified official of the poll panel as saying that it was a routine transfer.
However, Hazra’s transfer came following allegations that he had not cooperated with Ajay Pal Sharma, a special police observer appointed by the Election Commission, the news agency reported.
Workers of the Trinamool Congress protested against Sharma on Monday after videos of him going to the home of the party’s Falta candidate Jahangir Khan were widely shared on social media. The action, reported by some news organisations as a search operation, was carried out after complaints were allegedly raised that Khan was intimidating voters.
Sharma is a deputy inspector general of police in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj.
On Monday, the Bharatiya Janata Party posted a video on social media showing Sharma purportedly “reading the riot act” to Khan’s family.
“Listen carefully: if there is any mischief, the ‘treatment’ will be such that crying later won’t help,” Sharma can be heard purportedly saying in the video. He was standing in front of Khan’s home after he could not locate him, The Indian Express reported.
On social media, the TMC described Sharma as “Uttar Pradesh’s notorious ‘Singham’ and [Chief Minister] Adityanath’s favourite ‘encounter specialist’”.
“This is the same officer infamous for his trigger-happy ‘thok do’ [bump off] attitude,” the party alleged.
On Tuesday, the poll panel also removed two additional district magistrates, but had not provided reasons in the notice, the news agency reported. One of them was in charge of poll-related activities in the South 24 Parganas district.
Pleas against Sharma’s appointment as observer
A public interest litigation has been filed before the Supreme Court challenging the decision of the Election Commission to appoint Sharma as a police observer during the polls, Live Law reported on Wednesday.
The petitioner has alleged that the officer was behaving in a “highly partisan” manner and threatening candidates.
It is also alleged that Sharma’s actions violate the functions of the observer, which are to “watch the conduct of the elections” and be a “neutral institutional safeguard, whose presence is meant to reinforce public confidence in the conduct of elections”, according to the 1951 Representation of the People Act.
On Tuesday, the Calcutta High Court refused to pass an order on a plea that challenged Sharma's appointment as an observer. The court said that it cannot interfere with the polling process, Live Law reported.
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