Norms broken, state cadre babus stay on in posts

The Election Commission has come in for flak for its failure to clean up the bureaucracy in the state to ensure free and fair election even after 53 days of the model code of conduct coming into effect.
With less than 20 days left for the assembly election, many district collectors, SPs and senior police officials engaged in election duty are facing charges of partisan behaviour.Also, 25 SP level officials engaged directly or indirectly in election duty in the state are occupying cadre posts despite being non-cadre (read non-IPS) officials. Four of them are superintendents of police in districts and 12 of them are working in Chennai city. As per Rule 8 of the Indian Police Service (Cadre) Rules 1954, “every cadre post shall be filled by a cadre (IPS) officer” only. Some senior IPS officials and those in the state intelligence wing have been working as political party functionaries ever since the poll date was announced.
Some of them even canvassed smaller parties to join various fronts, said an official. Opposition parties have preferred complaints against many district collectors for partisan behavior.
Karur collector T P Rajesh is facing an Election Commission inquiry for allegedly helping a candidate go scot-free on April 18 after a block development officer seized the candidate’s vehicle with `10 lakh in cash. An FIR was registered five days later, after TOI exposed the issue and DMK preferred a complaint with the EC. But no cash seizure was shown in the FIR.
Of the 376 IAS officials in the state, 66% are direct recruits, but among the district collectors, there are very few direct IAS officials. Most of the district collectors are state civil service officials who were conferred with IAS. “They were posted as collectors immediately after the AIADMK government assumed office in 2011. Using their proximity to some ministers, they have managed to retain their posts. Those who had completed three years in a place were moved to other districts to preempt EC taking action against them,” said R Sivakumar, a retired IAS official.
IAS officials try to get maximum tenure as collectors because the comforts and paraphernalia that a collector enjoys is much more than what the chief secretary gets, said Sivakumar. Earlier, collectors used to be shifted every two years and majority of them were non-partisan. The situation has changed over the past 10 years and some collectors now act like district secretaries of ruling party, he said.