The Supreme Court on Monday rapped the West Bengal chief secretary for not receiving phone calls from the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court on the day when seven judicial officers engaged in the SIR
exercise in Malda district, were allegedly gheraoed and attacked on April 1.
The court also ordered the questioning of the 26 people arrested by West Bengal police in connection with the Malda incident, by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) even if they are in judicial custody.
The NIA submitted a report before the SC, following which the court exercised its plenary power to transfer cases related to the incident to the central agency. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi said the credibility of West Bengal bureaucracy is being lowered and politics is being brought into the secretariat and government offices.
The bench pulled up West Bengal chief secretary Dushyant Nariala for not receiving calls of the Calcutta HC Chief Justice on the day of the incident. It asked him to issue an apology, saying it represents the failure of the district administration.
The court said the Malda incident, in which judicial officers engaged in special intensive revision (SIR) work were gheraoed for hours, was actually pre-planned and motivated. Seven hundred judicial officers from West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand were deployed in the ongoing process to deal with more than 60 lakh objections of those excluded from the voter lists.
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Malda’s district magistrate has issued a show-cause notice to the additional district magistrate (law and order) after the incident.
The showcause notice dated April 4 was served to Shaikh Ansar Ahmad over “serious lapse in duty and failure to report ground situation to higher authority on 1st April 2026, regarding the condition of judicial officers at Kaliachak”. It states that Ahmad’s active communication with the sub-divisional officer (SDO) and block development officer (BDO) established that he was “fully aware of the developments unfolding on the ground and cannot claim ignorance of the prevailing situation”.
Ahmad has been accused of failing to communicate the gravity of the situation to the higher authority during the critical period between 3.30 pm and 8.30 pm on April 1.
“A period of five continuous hours during which the higher administration was left without any field-level input from the designated officer, thereby severely compromising the ability of the administration to take timely preventive or remedial measures,” the notice states.
The district magistrate has sought a written explanation with the reasons, steps taken by him to undertake his responsibilities of field coordination and escalation, and present other facts or circumstances on record.
A major political storm has erupted in Bengal over the incident, with both the BJP and TMC accusing each other, ahead of the assembly elections.
(With agency inputs)
