Senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday said that he has written a letter to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, urging him to remove 'biased' police officers from poll duty during the assembly elections due next year.
Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in the West Bengal assembly, claimed that in a convention of a police association held at Digha recently, several participants expressed a desire to see Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee as the chief minister for the fourth term.
"These police officers have done away with the norms of maintaining neutrality and have become biased. These officers should not be put on poll duty when the model code of conduct (MCC) comes into force before the assembly polls in West Bengal," he said in a press conference.
"I have sent a letter to the CEC seeking removal of biased police personnel from poll duty," Adhikari said.
Asserting that the men in uniform cannot make political statements like these, the BJP leader alleged that the police under Mamata Banerjee have ruined the last vestiges of democracy in the state.
He claimed that majority of the police personnel are seeking ouster of the Trinamool Congress government.
Regarding the issue of enlistment of data entry operators for election-related work, Adhikari alleged that state government-owned Webel Technology Limited has been entrusted to appoint personnel who will be taken from the TMC's political consultancy firm I-PAC.
"The data entry operators should ideally be permanent employees of the West Bengal government," he said.
The West Bengal CEO recently directed district election officers not to engage contractual data-entry operators and Bangla Sahayata Kendra staff for SIR or other poll-related work.
Once the election schedules are announced, the state administration comes under the control of the Election Commission, which operates through the officials and officers from the respective state cadres till the results are declared.
Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, then acting director general of police Rajiv Kumar was removed by the EC and later reinstated once the polls were over.
Kumar was removed by the Election Commission as the Commissioner of Calcutta Police ahead of the 2016 Assembly polls and brought back immediately after the election results were declared. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, anticipating a similar order from the central poll panel, the state administration had Kumar transferred to the state criminal investigation department as an additional director general of police.
The transfers are usually ordered to ensure “fair elections.”
An official said those officers and officials who have completed three years in the same post are routinely transferred during the elections.
In a letter to the CEC on Monday, the chief minister criticised the CEO for floating a Request for Proposal (RfP) for hiring 1,000 Data Entry Operators and 50 Software Developers for a period of one year, and stated that field offices have always hired their own contractual data entry personnel as per requirement.