Erring BBMP polling staff to face action

As many as 8,113 government officers are in the soup as cases will be registered against them under various laws, including the Karnataka Civil Services Rules and the Representation of People Act for not turning up even for the second leg of training on conduct of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) elections, held on Sunday.

BBMP Commissioner G Kumar Naik instructed his subordinates to book cases against the truant officers. Naik told Deccan Herald, “We have identified the errant officers. We will go case by case and book them all. Some people tried to escape by claiming that they did not receive the intimation, which is not true. Our records show that all of them have got  notices.”

Following the direction, a list of the officers, their department, designation and residential addresses have been prepared. Once the cases are registered, the police are empowered to forcibly take the officers to the training sessions, ensure their presence during the elections and prosecute them later. Once the cases are registered under the KCSR and Representation of People Act, the officers will lose their increment, promotion and retirement benefits, besides being prosecuted.

With barely four days left for the polls, a panic-stricken BBMP has identified 4,500 additional staff to conduct the BBMP elections, of which about 50 per cent are from Ramanagara district. Most of these 4,500 staff have already undergone training for the Panchayat polls. A crash training session will be held for them.

It may be recalled that the first training session had been held on August 12 when more than 5,200 presiding officers and first polling officers remained absent. This warranted the BBMP Commissioner to issue public notices asking the officers to attend the next session on Sunday. However, a majority of the officers did not show up again, warranting stern action this time round.