A division bench of Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Parthasarathi Sen on Tuesday dismissed a plea challenging the transfer of IAS, IPS and police officers in poll-bound Bengal.

“… we are constrained to hold that the writ petitioner could not establish that because of transfers of officers, any public injury is caused,” the order stated, dismissing the plea as “sans substance.”

The Bengal government had supported the petition.

“…merely because the state is supporting the petitioner, the petitioner cannot be permitted to travel beyond the scope of the pleadings. Thus, the supporting stand of state government will not improve the case of the petitioner. Similarly, state a respondent cannot enter into the shoes of a petitioner,” the bench said in its order.

An advocate, Arka Kumar Nag, had approached the Calcutta High Court challenging the spate of transfers of senior officials in the state on the orders of the Election Commission of India. The first petition filed by Nag was against the transfer of 46 IAS and IPS officers, followed by a second petition on the transfers of 267 officers-in-charge and inspectors-in-charge of police station and block development officer.

On the night of March 16, hours after the poll dates were announced then chief secretary Nandini Chakravorty and home secretary Jagadish Prasad Meena were transferred. This was the first time that a chief secretary had been moved out of office in the run-up to Assembly elections.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee latched onto the transfers as a talking point in her poll campaign and accused the BJP and the commission of imposing an “Emergency” in the state and paralysing her government.

“Merely because the EC has transferred a sizeable number of officers, it cannot be said that action is arbitrary, capricious or mala fide,” the high court order stated.

The counsel for the commission, Dama Sheshadri Naidu, had in his argument told the bench the chief secretary was replaced by an officer a year senior to her and the home secretary has seven years more experience than the previous occupant of the chair.

Naidu also had submitted a press clipping from March 17 which stated that 23 all India service officers were deployed in Bengal. In two other poll-bound states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the number of such deployments was 25 and 16 respectively.

Naidu had countered the argument that the state of Bengal is unique about shifting of all India service officers, saying it was factually incorrect.