Unicaus NEWS
West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. File | Photo Credit: ANI
According to notices issued by the West Bengal authorities on October 24, round 64 IAS officers and a whole lot of West Bengal Civil Service officers have been transferred from their postings.
A complete of 17 districts have been appointed new District Magistrates (DMs), like North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Cooch Behar, Murshidabad, Malda, Purulia, Darjeeling, Birbhum, Jhargram and Medinipur. Several of those districts share borders with Bangladesh, Jharkhand, and/or Bihar.
A number of erstwhile DMs have been reappointed as DMs of a distinct district, like IAS officer Preeti Goyal who was transferred as DM of Darjeeling district to DM of Malda district, and IAS officer Nitin Singhania, who was transferred as DM of Malda to DM of Murshidabad.
In different cases, DMs have been transferred to different departments like IAS officer Sharad Kumar Dwivedi, who has been moved from the publish of North 24 Parganas DM to the publish of Secretary in Health and Family Welfare Department, and IAS officer Sumit Gupta who was the DM of South 24 Parganas and has been appointed the Municipal Commissioner of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.
This shuffle assumes significance contemplating that district administration officers, particularly the DMs, play a key function within the SIR course of. According to particulars introduced by the Election Commission of India (ECI), the District Magistrates (DM) hear the primary attraction towards the choice of the Electoral Registration Officer in a given Assembly Constituency.
Other officers transferred by the West Bengal authorities embrace a number of Additional District Magistrates (ADMs), sub-divisional officers (SDO), officers on particular obligation (OSD) and block growth officers (BDOs).
“Administrative reshuffle earlier than an SIR is each State authorities’s proper. For any reshuffling in administrative positions after the announcement of SIR, they’ve to hunt the permission of the ECI,” Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar stated throughout his press convention on Monday (October 27, 2025).
Will hold a watch, says BJP
Meanwhile, the West Bengal unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wrote a letter to Election Commission officers alleging “continued violation of ECI pointers by the Government of West Bengal” in gentle of the latest reshuffling.
“The West Bengal Government has carried out a mass scale of 235 officers… after the announcement of SIR by the ECI on 24 June 2025… The Bharatiya Janata Party strongly protests this irregular step in full violation of the ECI pointers of ordering these transfers with out the approval of the ECI,” the letter reads.
Union Minister and BJP MP Sukanta Majumdar on Monday (October 27, 2025) stated that the celebration will hold a watch on the newly-appointed DMs and ADMs.
“We have seen the order. We will see what the aim of those transfers are, and on whose ‘gurumantra’ it was completed… If these new DMs and ADMs are seen defying guidelines and dealing on Trinamool’s directions, we’ll democratically resist it with full power,” Mr Majumdar stated.
However, the State administration and leaders of the ruling dispensation have described these transfers as ‘routine’.
Published – October 28, 2025 11:38 am IST
