No ‘injury to public interest’: HC nixes PIL against EC transfers
Times of India | 1 April 2026
Kolkata: Calcutta High Court on Tuesday dismissed a PIL challenging the transfer of officers by the Election Commission, stating that it could not be established that the poll panel used the power in an arbitrary manner that resulted in "any injury to public interest". However, individual aggrieved officers could move court against the transfers, it said.
Till March 28, the EC transferred sixty-three police officers and 16 IAS officers. Of them, 16 officers were sent out of Bengal.
In a 35-page judgment, a division bench of Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen said: "...The sxistence of power of ECI to transfer or shift officers is admitted, we are not inclined to conduct any roving enquiry and analysis to examine whether the ECI otherwise had any such power or not."
The court dismissed claims made in the PIL and by the state that the transfers have created a vacuum or, as advocate general Kishore Datta expressed, a "numb"-like situation in the state.
"Merely because the ECI transferred a sizable number of officers, it cannot be said that the action is arbitrary, capricious or mala fide. More so, when a similar or more number of transfers/posting of officers took place nationwide," the bench held.
Senior advocate Kalyan Bandopadhyay, representing petitioner Arka Kumar Nag, submitted that the transfer of officers in sizeable numbers disturbed the federal structure and amounted to interference in the activity of an elected govt. His bone of contention was over the transfers of the chief secretary, home secretary, Director General of Police, certain district magistrates and superintendents of police. The principal secretaries of some departments were also transferred.
The state supported the PIL, criticising EC's action. Datta argued that ‘staff' under Article 324(6) did not mean that the entire staff of a state came within the control and supervision of EC during election.
"The state, a respondent in the matter, cannot enter into the shoes of the petitioner," the HC said.
The EC, represented by DS Naidu, raised questions on the petition itself, stating that the petitioner, an advocate, had not come with "clean hands, clean mind, clean heart and clear objective". He submitted that such transfers were done in other states as well and the number of officers shifted in other states was much higher than in Bengal.