Two days after the schedule for the forthcoming elections to the Telangana Legislative Assembly has been announced, the Election Commission has cracked its whip on the administration transferring several District Collectors and Superintendents of Police.
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Accordingly, the poll panel has ordered transfer of Collectors of four districts who are District Election Officers and SPs of several districts with immediate effect. This is in addition to transfer of Police Commissioners of Hyderabad (C.V. Anand), Warangal (V. Ranganath) and Nizamabad (V. Satyanarayana).
The Election Commission, according to sources in the Chief Electoral Officer’s office, said in no uncertain terms that it would apply “zero tolerance tolerance towards officials with partisan attitude”. The decision was taken after the interaction with the officials on more than one occasion, including the recent visit of the team headed by the Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar when their performance was found reportedly to be not up to the mark.
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The seriousness with which the Commission had taken up the issue could be seen from the fact that Chief Secretary A. Santhi Kumari herself was directed to divest the portfolios of Principal Secretary of Excise, Commercial Taxes and Endowments she was holding. She was directed to appoint Principal Secretary rank officers to these portfolios with immediate effect.
The officials figured in the list of transferees were asked to hand over charge to officers below their rank immediately and “they (transferred officials) should not be assigned any election related works” till the completion of the election process on December 5. The communication from the ECI to the CEO’s office said that the Election Commission was categorical in claiming that conduct of free and fair polls would not be possible with the presence of such officials.
In addition, Commissioner of Commercial Taxes T.K. Sridevi, Excise Director Mohd. Musharraf Ali and Transport Secretary K. Srinivas Raju are among the senior bureaucrats who have been transferred.
The four District Collectors who had been transferred are: S. Harish (Rangareddy), D. Amoy Kumar (Medchal-Malkajgiri), T. Vijayakrishna Reddy (Yadadri-Bhongir) and K. Varun Reddy (Nirmal). The SPs M. Ramana Kumar (Sangareddy), B. Srinivas Reddy (Kamareddy), A. Bhaskar (Jagityal), K. Narasimha (Mahbubnagar), K. Manohar (Nagarkurnool), K. Srujana (Jogulamba-Gadwal), G. Chandramohan (Mahbubababd), N. Venkateshwarlu (Narayanpet), P. Karunakar (Jayashankar Bhupalpalli) and Rajendra Prasad (Suryapet).