High Court rejects two PILs against mass transfer of bureaucrats by Election Commission
Telegraph | 1 April 2026
Calcutta High Court on Tuesday dismissed two public interest litigations (PILs) challenging the legality of the Election Commission of India (EC)’s mass transfer of bureaucrats and top police officers, and 167 OCs and ICs of several police stations across Bengal.
While refusing to interfere in the EC’s orders, the division bench led by Chief Justice Sujoy Paul said: “The petitioner made an effort to establish a political nexus between certain senior politicians and the respondent no.9 (ECI). However, as rightly pointed out by learned counsel for the ECI, no such persons against whom allegations of connivance, pressure tactics etc. were alleged were impleaded by name.”
The high court went on: “Thus, no allegation of malice can be entertained against the ECI. Apart from bald pleadings, no material could be placed to establish any such nexus.”
Arka Kumar Nag, a lawyer who represents the state government in the high court, had filed the two PILs.
The order said the petitioner had admitted that the EC had the power to transfer, but alleged that the said power was arbitrarily used. “So, the existence of power with ECI is not in dispute. It (the petition) could not establish that the power has been used arbitrarily,” said the bench.
The first petition was moved after the EC had transferred some high ranking officers, including the chief secretary, the home secretary, the director general of police and the Calcutta police commissioner.
In the second petition, Nag had challenged the sudden removal of 167 OCs and OCs from their respective posts.
The PILs claimed a political nexus between some senior members of the BJP and the EC that led to the transfers.
Senior lawyer Kalyan Banerjee represented the petitioner. As the petitioner had made the Bengal government a party in the case, advocate-general Kishore Datta held the brief for the state.
Both Banerjee and Datta challenged the validity of the EC’s decisions and claimed the poll panel had violated the Election Act.
EC’s counsel Dama Seshadri Naidu said his client had taken the decisions with the intention of making the polls free and fair. “Same practices were taken regarding other states, but in West Bengal only the decisions of the ECI are facing challenges,” he argued.
Banerjee said the EC was found to be overactive in Bengal when polls were scheduled to be held in four other states of the country as well. “The law has given ECI some powers, but the powers are being arbitrarily used,” he said.
Datta said that because of massive transfers or removal of bureaucrats and police officers, the law and order of the state might be jeopardised. “Since the state is the authority in controlling the law and order, the ECI cannot transfer or remove key officers at its whim.”
In this context, the bench observed: “We are constrained to hold that the writ petitioner could not establish that because of the transfer of officers, any public injury is caused.”