Trinamool Congress on Friday approached the Calcutta High Court challenging the transfer of several IAS and IPS officers in West Bengal by the Election Commission of India after the announcement of assembly polls.The petition filed by TMC leader and lawyer Kalyan Banerjee names Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar as a respondent. The plea questions the EC’s decision to transfer officers without consulting the state government. The matter is likely to be heard early next week.The Election Commission had transferred a large number of senior officials, including the chief secretary, home secretary and director general of police, within hours of announcing the assembly elections on March 15.West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee criticised the move on Thursday, calling it “an undeclared emergency” and a “deliberate design to seize control of Bengal through coercion and institutional manipulation”. “What we are witnessing is nothing short of an undeclared emergency, driven by political vendetta, not democratic principles,” she said.Banerjee later wrote to CEC Kumar, urging the EC to refrain from such “arbitrary, unilateral and biased” action. “EC has crossed all boundaries of decency and constitutional propriety. Since the commencement of the so-called Special Intensive Revision, the ECI has acted with apparent bias, showing little regard for ground realities or the well-being of the people,” the chief minister wrote.The Election Commission on Thursday paused some of its inter-state transfer orders for senior police officers. Bidhannagar CP Murlidhar Sharma and Siliguri CP Syed Waquar Raza, who were earlier asked to move to Tamil Nadu, have been told to wait. Transfer orders for Barrackpore CP Praveen Tripathi and Howrah CP Akash Magharia to Tamil Nadu, as well as Birbhum SP Amandeep’s move to Karnataka, have also been put on hold.Elections for the 294-member West Bengal Assembly will be held in two phases on April 23 and 29, with counting scheduled for May 4.
