SAS Nagar, February 8: In the democratic setup conduct offree and fair elections is one of the most important duties of theadministration; an officer or official showing callousness towards the job orwillful absenteeism from duty will be strictly dealt with said DistrictElectoral Officer Girish Dayalan in a meeting held here today to review thepoll preparedness for the forthcoming elections to the Civic bodies.
The unanimous report from all the Returning Officers thatquite a few of the staff deployed on poll duty under one pretext or the othertry to evade duty; in some cases external pressure to cancel duty is also beingexerted , invited wrath of the DEO and he made it crystal clear that anyattempts at outside influence would be viewed as obstructing the process ofelections and serious action would be taken in such cases.
He said that in case of absenteeism from duty would,administration would write against the erring officer/official to therespective Department’s Administrative Secretaries for strict departmental andpenal action as the need be as well as to the State election for action underrelevant sections of Representation of the People Act (RP Act) 1951 and PunjabState Election ACT,1994.