Axe on 7 AEROs for ‘dereliction of SIR duty, misconduct’

New Delhi: In an unprecedented step, the Election Commission has suspended seven assistant electoral registration officers (AEROs) engaged in the SIR exercise in Bengal over "serious misconduct, dereliction of duty and misuse of statutory powers".The commission also directed the Bengal chief secretary to ensure that disciplinary proceedings are initiated against them by their respective cadre-controlling authorities and asked to be apprised in this regard. Unlike on earlier occasions when the commission asked the Bengal govt to suspend the "errant" EROs and AEROs, the EC this time took recourse to its powers under Section 13CC of the R P Act 1950 and the terms of settlement arrived at between the commission and the Centre. The officials placed under immediate suspension are AEROs of Samserganj (Sefaur Rahaman, assistant director in the agriculture department), Farakka (Nitish Das, revenue officer), Maynaguri (Dalia Ray Choudhury, women development officer), Suti (Murshid Alam, ADA), Canning Purbo (joint BDO Satyajit Das and FEO Joydeep Kundu) and Debra (Debashis Biswas, joint BDO).According to sources, it was observed that all these officers, during scrutiny of cases parked for final publication, cleared multiple cases despite non-submission of documents and inconsistencies in the mapping and eligibility of electors, and failed to take corrective action, thereby approving ineligible cases and misusing their statutory powers.Dalia Ray Choudhury, Satyajit Das, Joydeep Kundu and Debashis Biswas were found to have cleared multiple cases despite adverse remarks by the micro-observer over non-submission of documents or insufficient documentation. Choudhury told reporters, "I gave my 100% and worked only as instructed. I don't know what will happen next."Bengal CEO Manoj Agarwal on Monday said that the suspension directly is unprecedented and never happened in any other state. According to him, the suspension will be reviewed by a 3-member committee every three months. The cases disposed of by these 7 AEROs will be reviewed by the EROs, Agarwal said.(Written with inputs from Debashis Konar and Kaushik Pradhan in Kolkata)