Senior BJP leader and former Chief Minister Arjun Munda on Wednesday criticized the Election Commission for sitting over the State Chief Electoral Officer's report recommending immediate removal of the Deputy Commissioner as well as the Superintendent of Police (SP) of Dumka for the landmine blast on April 24 that had killed eight persons, including five policemen.
Munda also flayed the State Government for its failure to act on the Director General of Police (DGP) Rajiv Kumar's report recommending suspension of the Dumka SP Nirmal Mishra for committing a serious lapse and giving free run to Maoists to ambush a polling party at Shikaripara on the polling day.
“Both DC Harsha Mangla as well as the SP should have been immediately suspended. The obvious inaction on the part of the State Government as well as the EC is undermining the authority of the DGP as well as the State CEO," he told The Pioneer over phone from Varanasi where he is campaigning for BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. The DGP's report, submitted to the State Government a week back, held the SP as well as deputy commissioner responsible for ignoring security protocols that led to the deaths of eight persons in a Maoist ambush.
Significantly, acting Chief Secretary Sajal Chakraverty has also held the DC as well as SP responsible for the incident and said, a couple of days back, that both will be transferred so that they could not influence the investigation into the case. The ambush, the only major blot in an otherwise peaceful election in Maoist-hit State, could not have been pulled off with such apparent ease if the security forces and the polling party stuck to the strategy put in place by the State administration.
The former Chief Minister said that the DGP report has nailed the district administration for playing a partisan role in conducting the elections in Dumka where the BJP has given the two heavyweight regional leaders Shibu Soren and Babulal Marandi run for their money. "And yet the Commission is silent which raises several questions," he added.
Maintaining that the Commission has failed to stop silent booth capturing in states like West Bengal and UP, Munda said that the role of the Election observers, deployed in Dumka, should also come under scrutiny.
"They (observers) happen to be the eye and ear of the Commission. They are supposed to report to the Commission, of the district administration deployed security forces in order to favour the ruling party candidate. So, they too have apparently failed to discharge their duty," he said.
Notably, the DGP's probe report, lying with the State Government, criticised the deployment of security forces, alleging that personnel were spread out too thinly in the interiors.
"The central para military forces were mainly deployed in town and semi-urban areas, while the ill-equipped district policemen were sent to the rebel-hit and remote areas," the report said.
CEO P K Jajoria said that he had sent the probe report of the DGP and other officials to the Election Commission and now it is for the EC to take a final decision on it. "We are yet to get any instruction from the EC," he added.
Repeated queries from the Pioneer to Deputy Election Commissioner Alok Shukla, who happens to be the incharge of Jharkhand, failed to elicit any response in this regard.