Author: Biswabrata Goswami
Publication: The Statesman
Date: November 26, 2006
The Chakdah block developm-ent officer, Mr
Sanjib Sarkar, who earned the wrath of lo-cal CPI-M leaders during the last
Assembly polls for purging the voter list of bogus names, has been served
a transfer order to take cha-rge as BDO of Purulia-II block despite a Calcutta
High Court hearing being scheduled for 7 December on the issue.
The Kalyani SDO, Mr Sa-mit Ghosh, recently
issued the transfer order which made a stir among the WBCS officials. The
CPI-M local leadership had tried their best to get Mr Sarkar tr-ansferred
to elsewhere since the last Assembly polls.
Mr Sarkar had also lodged a complaint with
the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) against the move and claimed that
the state gover- nment's transfer rules were not followed in his case. A hearing
in this regard is likely to be held on 7 December. Calcutta High Court has
as-ked the state government not to transfer Mr Sarkar be-fore 7 December.
Since the last Assembly polls, the CPI-M's
local leadership, headed by the party's Chakdah zonal committee leader Mr
Amal Bhowmik, had not been pleased with Mr Sarkar's activities. He had struck
out hundreds of bogus names from the electoral rolls and criticised ma- ny
"illegal" activities of the CPI-M dominated Chakdah panchayat samity.
At that time, the rigour with which Mr Sarkar had set to the work of cleaning
up the vo-ter list won him words of pr-aise form Mr KJ Rao, who had been appointed
by the Election Commission to en-sure a free and fair poll in West Bengal.
Later, when the situation turned against Mr
Sarkar, he had to lodge an FIR against CPI-M leader. Mr Gurudas Dutta for
making "threatening" statements against him.
CPI-M leaders alleged that names of genuine
voters had been deleted from the electoral rolls. The BDO alleged that Mr
Dutta had threatened him, saying ``your head will be separated from your body
after the election."
After that, for the first time in West Bengal,
the Election Commission had instructed the district administration to provide
personal security to a block development officer whom a CPI-M leader had threatened
with harm.
Calling the incident serious and sensitive,
the then district magistrate, Mr Rajesh Pandey, had said: "Since intimidation
is a bailable offence, the accused was released on bail. Mr Dutta again started
threatening people. The issue was discussed at a meeting with the deputy election
commissioner, Mr R Balakrishnan, and the chief electoral officer, Mr Debasis
Sen. The commission instructed the administration to take stern action against
each case of intimidation. So Mr Dutta was once more arrested by police."
Not only Mr Dutta, the CPI-M leader Mr Bhowmik
had also had a tussle with Mr Sarkar and lodged several complaints against
him with the district administration. At that time, Mr Bhowmik had threatened
Mr Sarkar and launched a protest demonstration against him in Chakdah. Finally,
Mr Sarkar, after getting an instruction from the district magistrate, had
to lodge a complaint with the Chakdah police against Mr Bhowmik too.
