The Election Commission, which met Bengal chief secretary Nandini Chakravorty on Friday, set the state a fresh deadline to carry out its orders, including those for filing FIRs against officials alleged to have erred during the SIR exercise.

“The chief secretary has been given time for compliance with EC orders till 5.30pm on February 17,” a commission official told The Telegraph.

“We have passed multiple orders for action, including FIRs against certain officers for offences committed in the discharge of their duties. These have not been complied with. The state government has also been repeatedly instructed to pay the prescribed honorarium for BLOs, which has not been done.”

In August last year, the poll panel had summoned Chakravorty’s predecessor Manoj Pant after the Bengal government refused to suspend five officials on the commission’s directive. These five had been accused of “failure to perform statutory duties and for violating data security policies by sharing login credentials with unauthorised persons”.

This was in connection with more than 100 fictitious names being inserted into the rolls for Moyna and Baruipur Purba Assembly constituencies. The accused electoral registration officers (EROs) and their assistants had reportedly admitted to these lapses, describing them as “mistakes”.

Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had publicly declared that her government would not file FIRs against them as their actions were unintentional. They were later suspended but no FIRs were filed.

Last month, the poll panel questioned the disciplinary proceedings that had cleared three officials and imposed a minor penalty on another. The fifth accused, a casual data entry operator, had been removed from all election-related duty.

The commission cited 2023 guidelines, which say that “disciplinary authorities shall mandatorily consult the Election Commission before closing or finalising any matter arising out of disciplinary proceedings initiated on the recommendation of the (Election) Commission”.

In January, the poll panel removed an assistant ERO in Basirhat for allegedly appointing AEROs without authority, and pulled up the Trinamool government for transferring three IAS officers deployed as electoral roll observers.

Mamata has cited the withholding of central funds as well as budget constraints as reasons for not paying the enhanced honorariums to the BLOs.

Bengal government employees’ unions have questioned the practice of notifying on WhatsApp rather than on paper the repeated changes to the SIR norms, as well as the generation of notices to voters by the commission’s online system despite the ERO having the sole mandate to issue them.

‘Abandon’ exercise

The CPM on Saturday released a letter from its general secretary M.A. Baby to chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar that says the SIR is “turning into a war against the people” and seeks its abandonment. The letter was sent on Tuesday but has remained unanswered, the party said.

In the communication, Baby reiterates the demand from Opposition parties to scrap the SIR, citing the large-scale forgery of deletion forms in Assam, erroneous deletions in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and “the untested and opaque” software-based identification of “logical discrepancies” as well as the parallel administration of micro-observers in Bengal.

These have taken place, Baby said, in an “unrealistic timeframe” decided without consulting the political parties.

“Imposing the burden on already-enrolled voters to re-establish their eligibility, failing which deletion is threatened, is arbitrary, unlawful, and contrary to settled procedure,” the letter says.

“….The marginalised and minorities, especially women in the rural areas, have been disproportionately impacted.”

It adds: “Utterances by the Assam Chief Minister have only added grist to the mill.”

Assam’s BJP chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, told reporters in Digboi last month: “When the SIR comes to Assam, four to five lakh Miya (a term used for Bengali-speaking Muslims in the state) votes will have to be deleted in Assam…. My job is to make the Miya people suffer.”

Baby’s letter says: “The Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, clearly lay down that in the case of an intensive revision the Rules applicable to first-time preparation of electoral rolls apply.

“Such a revision proceeds on a ‘blank roll’, where additions are made. The present SIR does not begin with a blank roll, nor does it provide for systematic addition…. In view of the above, we once again urge the Election Commission of India to abandon this exercise which is turning into a war against the people.”