EC directive about UP Chief Secretary and DGP leaves many questions

Lucknow: The recent directive of the Election Commission prohibiting the Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary and Director General of Police (DGP) to visit field and to not do any video conferencing, has left many unanswered questions.

The directive clearly indicates the EC has no confidence in the impartiality of top administrative and police officer of the state. If they are stopped from going to field and do video conferencing with field officers then what happens when some exigency crops up?

Will they continue to keep themselves away from their duty or interact with subordinate staff to pass on necessary instructions? if not so, then how can they justify their respective positions in the name of governance?

It does not stop here, the other side of picture shows that they can still speak to field officers using telephone and video chatting and to use other means to give instructions to field officers favouring some party, if they come to it . The EC directive remains silent on this aspect.

To sum up,the directive of EC fails to serve any purpose in view of election code of conduct. For all practical purposes, either EC should have full confidence in the CS and DGP or not have it at all. The half measures are not going to help the poll mechanism, it looks.

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A senior official finds the EC directive funny and ineffective as he says the top officers should be allowed to function with untied hands or remove them if it considers them to be working in the favour of ruling party.

It may be recalled that in a recent action, the EC had removed 13 District Magistrates and 9 District Police Chiefs leaving the senior hierarchy untouched so far.

It could also be mentioned here that the Bharatiya Janata Party had lodged a complaint with the EC, earlier, against DGP Javeed Ahmed accusing him of working in the favour of Samajwadi Party.