The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday ordered the transfer of Sujata R. Karthikeyan, an IAS officer and wife of powerful Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leader V.K. Pandian, from the post of secretary to the Mission Shakti department in Odisha.
ECI sources said that Ms. Karthikeyan, Commissioner cum Secretary, Department of Mission Shakti, has been ordered to be transferred to a non-public dealing department with immediate effect.
The action was taken based on complaints of alleged misuse of public office, sources said.
Earlier in the day, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had urged the Election Commission of India to relieve her from the post alleging that she was involved in influencing women’s self-help groups to vote for the BJD.
A high level BJP delegation comprising Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, MP Sudhanshu Trivedi, and BJP general secretary Om Pathak submitted a memorandum in this regard with the ECI in New Delhi.
According to the memorandum, the Odisha department of Mission Shakti was organising a Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme for the 2024 Parliamentary and Assembly elections for women self-help groups (SHGs) to reach out wider population with its messages of voter awareness and education.
“The functionaries of the Mission Shakti department have been compelling and coercing these SHGs, with the threat of stopping the government financial benefits, and thus making them propagate and influence the voters to choose BJD in the upcoming Parliamentary as well as legislative elections,” the delegation alleged.
The BJP claimed that Ms. Karthikeyan is the wife of Mr. Pandian, who is a close aide of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, and was indulging in grave misconduct through misuse of authority, government machinery, and manpower for influencing voters through the ‘SVEEP’ program to ensure electoral gains for the BJD.
“It is extremely unfortunate that the serving IAS officer has given a pass to professionalism and is actively indulging as an agent of the BJD given the influence of her husband. It would have been fair and proper for her to understand the implications of being the wife of Mr. Pandian. Furthermore by understanding her role in the overall gamut of the ongoing elections, she should have gone on leave and disassociated herself from anything to do with the electoral process,” the delegation observed.
However, instead of doing so, she was actively participating in the elections as a front person of the BJD in a manner which had been unheard of earlier, the saffron party charged.
“With a view to preserve the unbiased and unblemished reputation of ECI, it would be in the fitness of things to relieve Ms. Karthikeyan from the post of commissioner-cum-secretary of Department of Mission Shakti and not assigned any public dealing duty till the conclusion of elections in Odisha,” the delegation urged.
Though the memorandum copy features the name of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, her signature is missing.
