New Delhi: Just weeks to West Bengal assembly elections, the Calcutta High Court Tuesday dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) against Election Commission’s transfer of top state officials, ruling that the petitioner had not established any “public injury” from the decision.
The petitioners, it said, had also conceded in the PIL that EC “possessed the legal authority to shift officers to ensure a level playing field”.
Because the PIL did not question EC’s authority to make the transfers and there was no indication of malice in the poll panel’s decision, there was no reason to hold that the state was being given “step motherly treatment”, a division bench of Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen said.
“Since in the entire body of the petition, the petitioner… has not pleaded regarding any breach of any Central/State Legislation and not pleaded that Election Commission did not have the authority or jurisdiction to shift/transfer officers, in this PIL we are not inclined to undertake any academic exercise to examine as to whether ECI otherwise has any such power or not,” the bench said.
The PIL, filed by advocate Arka Kumar Nag and argued by senior advocate and Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Bandopadhyay, contended that transferring officers in sizeable numbers disturbed the federal structure and amounted to interference in the functioning of an elected government. The EC, it alleged, wielded supervisory powers only.
The Election Commission on 15 March declared the dates for elections in four states, including West Bengal, and a Union territory. Two days later, it issued the order to transfer officials across states, including Bengal’s chief secretary, home secretary and DGP.
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‘No administrative collapse’
The high court bench anchored its dismissal of the PIL in a 1981 case—S.P. Gupta vs Union of India—which held that a PIL is maintainable only where a “public injury” or “impact on public at large” is demonstrably established.
The court found that the petitioner had not proved the transfers would lead to an “administrative collapse” or deprive the public of essential services.
The petitioner had argued that removing experienced bureaucrats would have a “cascading effect” on state functioning, effectively producing what the petition called an “administrative numb-like situation”.
The Election Commission, represented by counsel D.S. Naidu, countered with comparative data: 40 officers had been transferred in Jharkhand and 49 in Madhya Pradesh—against 23 in West Bengal.
The commission told the court the replacement for the transferred chief secretary was an officer one year senior to him, and the replacement for the home secretary was seven years his senior—directly rebutting the claim of an “administrative vacuum”.
The bench agreed. “If officers are transferred for a short time i.e. till election, it cannot be said that administrative machinery in the State is paralysed and a ‘numb’ like situation has been created,” it said, adding that when one officer leaves a post, another occupies it, ensuring “no vacuum created in the system”.
No ‘roving enquiry’
The petition noted that “the power to transfer officers, though vested in the Election Commission of India to uphold the principle of a level playing field during elections, is one that must be exercised with caution”.
Having acknowledged that jurisdiction, the petitioner could not then dispute its existence.
The bench treated this as the central reasoning for dismissing the PIL, noting that if the EC’s authority was not contested, there was no jurisdictional question for the court to adjudicate.
The court reiterated that the scope of judicial review on administrative decisions was limited, and declined to conduct what it called a “fishing or roving enquiry” into EC’s powers.
Political nexus allegation
The PIL also sought to establish a political nexus between “certain senior politicians” and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, against whom the TMC—the ruling party in West Bengal—has moved an impeachment notice for removal.
The court Tuesday declined to entertain the allegation.
“As rightly pointed out by learned counsel for the ECI, no such persons against whom allegations of connivance, pressure tactics etc” were alleged to be impleaded by name, the bench said, holding that no allegation of malice could stand against EC.
The commission’s counsel had argued that the ECI functions as a “neutral umpire” under Article 324 of the Constitution, and that the transfers were executed to ensure free and fair elections — not as a “vindictive approach” against West Bengal.
The high court accepted the commission’s framing and noted that “the transfer is an incident of service” but it left the door open for any aggrieved officer to challenge their individual transfer order through appropriate legal proceedings.
Petitioner-advocate Nag told ThePrint that the court may have decided differently because the count of transfers from West Bengal has now exceeded 300. But, he said, he is inclined to approach the Supreme Court for relief via a special leave petition.
Since 1952, Nag said, this is the first time the chief secretary has been transferred. The situation was “unprecedented” and many more transfers could happen in the future, he said.
Security forces, which report directly to the Union Home Ministry, are deployed in West Bengal but there have been no transfers there, he said.
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