The Election Commission of India on Tuesday removed two police officers from poll-related duties.

They are the superintendent of police of Sunderbans police district, Koteswara Rao Nalavath, and Aminul Islam Khan, the subdivisional police officer of Minakhan, which is in Basirhat police district.

The removal of the two police officers comes just three days before the seventh phase of the elections. The Sunderbans police district in South 24-Parganas covers the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha constituency and parts of the Mathurapur and the Joynagar parliamentary segments, where the voting will be held on June 1.

Minakhan, which is a part of the Basirhat constituency, will also vote on the same day. Sandeshkhali, which had been on the boil over incidents of land grab and molestation allegedly committed by former Trinamool strongman Sheikh Shahjahan, falls under the jurisdiction of the Minakhan subdivision.

Sources in the EC said the transfer of Islam was very significant because several BJP leaders had complained to the panel about his alleged excesses in Sandeshkhali.

Later in the day, the commission appointed Sandeep Karra, an IPS officer of the 2016 batch, as the new SP of the Sunderbans police district and Amitava Konar, a WBPS officer, as the Minakhan SDPO.

Nalavath becomes the fifth IPS officer to be removed by the commission this year. Previously, the EC had transferred DG Rajeev Kumar followed by DIG Murshidabad range Mukesh Kumar and the SPs of Purulia and West Mindapore Abhijit Banerjee and Dhritiman Sarkar, respectively, to posts not related to polls.

The commission had also removed the SDPO of the Contai, Dibakar Das, before the sixth phase of the election.

Just after the polls were announced on March 14, the EC had removed four district magistrates — Bidhan Roy of East Burdwan, Tanvir Afzal of East Midnapore, Purnendu Kumar Maji of Birbhum and Sunil Agarwala of Jhargram because they were WBCS officers and did not belong to the IAS cadre.