{"id":504715,"date":"2024-03-15T17:57:42","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T12:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/?p=504715"},"modified":"2024-04-16T18:29:05","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T12:59:05","slug":"transfer-of-officials-lok-sabha-election-madhya-pradesh-chhattisgarh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/politics\/transfer-of-officials-lok-sabha-election-madhya-pradesh-chhattisgarh\/","title":{"rendered":"Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh transfer officials en masse ahead of Lok Sabha elections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Neeraj Mishra<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dates for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections will be announced tomorrow and the Model Code of Conduct will come into force. In anticipation of the code&#8217;s freeze on transfers, the newly elected governments of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have been reshuffling officers over the past two weeks. The Chhattisgarh government has effected more than 350 transfers of IAS, IPS, IFS and other top officers over two weeks while the Madhya Pradesh government has been slightly ahead with more than 500 transfers, 47 of them today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This begs the question why do governments go in for such large scale transfers? An obvious reason is that they have just come to power in December 2023 and a number of changes are almost necessary with a new regime. The other reason is less obvious but more powerful. Transfer-posting is an industry in these states. Ever since the time of Arjun Singh, who discovered and established this industry in the 1980s, the transfer of government officials at all levels, from school teacher and constable to IAS, has been a money spinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Singh was CM, there were very few industries in the undivided Madhya Pradesh. There were even fewer public works contracts to be doled out to supporters. Government jobs were too few to accommodate a very large supporter base in each district. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Singh made making instant money from transfer of government servants an easy source of revenue generation for party cadre. Government servants were the only ones with regular income besides some big businesses who could pay to avoid being uprooted. So a constable would pay to remain in a certain thana or district and a teacher would do the same to remain in her home. They could approach the local Congress office-bearers to either get themselves transferred to a good posting or remain home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The same applied to higher officials, who became a secret source of donations. Subsequent governments have only refined these methods and discovered juicy districts and departments like Excise, Transport, Mining and PWD ever since. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How are transfers and elections connected?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>State governments scramble to post officials of their choice in relevant places and districts where they think they may be of help. With the services now getting more and more politically inclined, it is a safe bet to assume what these officials are supposed to deliver. \u201cIn the poorer districts government officials from patwari and tehsildar to foresters hold great sway over public opinion. Sometimes they also provide funding for the candidates,&#8221; says Vinay Tripathi, a Congressman but speaking as a representative of the political class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though the Election Commission of India gets hold over all administrative transfers and postings for the \u00a0duration of elections, it transfers a minuscule number of officers only on complaints. State governments meanwhile have already got ample time to prepare themselves which may be unfair to the opposition but that\u2019s how it is. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apart from the transfer postings industry, the services are now more and more politically inclined and are useful in the days ahead<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":504721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[162562,7,1497,4,125714],"tags":[3102,31704,162304,41495,4074,68448],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2024\/03\/15173508\/vip-security.1.2047395-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504715"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504715"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=504715"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=504715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- html is corrupted -->