The district magistrates posted in south Bengal will have to face questions on the mapping of 2002 and 2025 electoral rolls and the appointment of booth-level officers during the video conference with the Election Commission of India on Wednesday, as these two issues will top the agenda for the meeting.
The EC will hold a preparatory meeting with Bengal officials, including district magistrates, who are the district election officers, electoral registration officers (EROs), assistant ERTs (AEROs) and officers-in-charge (election), on Wednesday.
Issues related to preparation for the upcoming special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls will be discussed at the meeting.
Initially, officials from all districts were supposed to attend the meeting on Wednesday, but officials from north Bengal were omitted following the natural calamity. A separate meeting will be convened for the north Bengal districts later.
“All issues related to the proposed SIR will be discussed during the meeting on Wednesday. But the DMs will have to face most of the questions on the mapping of 2002 and 2025 electoral rolls and appointments of BLOs,” said a senior official in the poll panel.
Under the mapping, booth-level officers visited the residences of the electors whose names figured in the 2002 list — when the last SIR was conducted in the state — and checked their status in the 2025 rolls.
A bureaucrat on Tuesday explained why the EC was laying stress on those two issues.
The EC was focusing on the mapping of the 2002 and 2025 electoral rolls to find out how many of the 2002 electorates’ names still figured in the 2025 rolls. Also, the EC would be able to know about the children of the 2002 voters because of the mapping.
“Those whose names figure in the 2002 rolls would not be required to submit any document. Also, their children would not require any documents except one to prove their identity. So, mapping of the 2002 and 2025 rolls is very important,” said the official.
The EC was also laying stress on the appointment of BLOs following the guidelines issued by it. The EC recently asked the state governments to appoint BLOs from direct state government employees in the categories of group C and above.
“BLOs will be the eyes and ears of the EC during the SIR as they will visit the residences of voters to distribute enumeration forms. They will also inform the EC about the dead and shifted voters. So, the EC wanted BLOs from the government employees’ pool so that action could be taken against them in case they don’t discharge their responsibility properly,” said the official.
The issue has already become sensitive as the chief electoral officer (CEO) of Bengal, Manoj Agarwal, asked the district magistrates to look into complaints that more than 2,000 BLOs were appointed across the state, bypassing the guidelines of the EC.
Gyanesh Bharti, the deputy commissioner of the EC, who is in charge of Bengal, will reach Calcutta on Tuesday evening and is scheduled to attend the video conference from the city on Wednesday.
After the meeting, the EC officials will visit Rajarhat, where EROs and AEROs of Rajarhat-Gopalpur and Rajarhat-New Town Assembly segments will be present to report their preparedness for the SIR.
The visit to Rajarhat by the EC officials is significant as the poll panel recently identified that several fictitious voters were enrolled in the Rajarhat-Gopalpur
Assembly segment.
“The EROs and AEROs of these two Assembly segments will be facing tough questions from the EC officials,” said a source.