The Election Commission on Wednesday transferred East Midnapore district magistrate, who is also the district election officer (DEO), Unice Rishin Ismail, and posted Niranjan Kumar, a 2007-batch IAS officer, in his place after the EC found some contractual employees’ names were included in the database prepared for deployment on poll duties.

Deploying contractual employees on poll duties is against the directive of the EC. “The EC had made it clear that no contractual employee should be enlisted for deployment on poll duties. If the instruction is violated, the EC has no other option than to take action against the DEO,” said an EC source.

The EC has transferred 12 DMs since the model code of conduct came into effect.