SAS Nagar, February 8: In the democratic setup conduct of free and fair elections is one of the most important duties of the administration; an officer or official showing callousness towards the job or willful absenteeism from duty will be strictly dealt with said District Electoral Officer Girish Dayalan in a meeting held here today to review the poll preparedness for the forthcoming elections to the Civic bodies.
The unanimous report from all the Returning Officers that quite a few of the staff deployed on poll duty under one pretext or the other try to evade duty; in some cases external pressure to cancel duty is also being exerted , invited wrath of the DEO and he made it crystal clear that any attempts at outside influence would be viewed as obstructing the process of elections 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 the respective Department’s Administrative Secretaries for strict departmental and penal action as the need be as well as to the State election for action under relevant sections of Representation of the People Act (RP Act) 1951 and Punjab State Election ACT,1994.