The Election Commission has decided to send 10 IAS officers, one Indian Defence Accounts Service officer and one Indian Statistical Service officer to 10 districts of Bengal to monitor the SIR process as special roll observers.
The Supreme Court had on Monday directed the poll panel to publish the list of voters to be scrutinised for “logical discrepancies”, give receipts for documents submitted by them and allow booth-level agents (BLAs) of political parties to accompany voters during the hearings.
“The EC has decided to send special roll observers to East and West Midnapore, Hooghly, Nadia, South and North Dinajpur, West Burdwan, Birbhum and Murshidabad. The EC has deputed two special roll observers for North 24-Parganas. All these officers are being sent to monitor the exercise,” said a senior EC official.
Sources in the poll panel said these officials would be the eyes and ears of the EC in districts where trouble could break out in the near future if the BLAs are allowed inside the hearing centres.
An official drew attention to the violence that had been reported during SIR hearings in the 10 districts, and also to the fact that these areas were strongholds of the ruling Trinamool Congress.
“The EC is certain that the state government officials engaged in the SIR exercise were put under tremendous pressure during the enumeration phase. It is because the BLOs were forced to upload erroneous enumeration forms that so many logical discrepancies have been flagged in Bengal...,” the official said.
According to the notification, the EC has deputed Harsh Mangla, joint secretary in the ministry of health and family welfare, for East Midnapore; Nand Kumar, the CEO of electronics and IT in the ministry of electronics and information technology, for Hooghly; and P. Bala Kiran, joint secretary in the department of personnel and training, for Nadia.
Prasanna R, a joint secretary in the Union home ministry, and Ravi Shankar, a joint secretary in the ministry of consumer affairs, will be sent to North 24-Parganas as special roll observers to monitor the hearings and verification of voters to be scrutinised for logical discrepancies.
Raghav Langer, secretary of the National Medical Commission under the ministry of health and family welfare, will monitor the process in South Dinajpur, while V. Kiran Goyal, a joint secretary in the same ministry, has been assigned North
Dinajpur.
Shashank Mishra, joint secretary in the ministry of power, will be the special roll observer for West Burdwan; Venkatesapathy S, a joint secretary in the ministry of port, shipping and waterways, will monitor Birbhum; and Devesh Deval, a joint secretary in the ministry of food processing industry, will do the job in West Midnapore.
Gaya Prasad, an Indian Statistical Service officer and joint secretary in the Union home ministry, will be in Murshidabad, while Nistha Upadhyay, an Indian Defence Accounts Service officer and additional CEO in the ministry of commerce and industry, will be attached to the Bengal chief electoral officer’s office. The Bengal CEO will allot a district
to Upadhyay.
Sources said the EC had already appointed IAS officers from the Bengal cadre as electoral roll observers for all the districts.
Now, some in the administration are questioning whether senior officers from Delhi have been placed over and above the Bengal officers because the EC does not trust the state bureaucrats. But a senior poll panel official said the Delhi officials were being sent to share the workload of the district observers.
EC sources said that the last date for hearing could be extended by 10 days following the SC order. Similarly, the date for final rolls publication could also be extended.
