The Election Commission has picked Manoj Kumar Agarwal as the next chief electoral officer of Bengal after rejecting the state’s first shortlist of candidates and seeking a revised panel of three IAS officers who would be retiring shortly after May 2026.
The poll panel’s demand meant it wanted a CEO who would retire after overseeing the 2026 Assembly polls, and could therefore “not be put under any kind of pressure by Bengal’s ruling dispensation during the elections”, a senior bureaucrat said.
Sources in Nabanna said Agarwal, former Bengal food and supplies secretary, was “shunted out” after asking officials to file an FIR over PDS irregularities in 2018. In October 2023, then food and supplies minister Jyotipriyo Mallick was arrested by the CBI on charges of ration irregularities.
A case of disproportionate assets against Agarwal, filed by the CBI in 2009, was dismissed in 2015.
The CEO’s post fell vacant last December following the retirement of Ariz Aftab. The commission rejected the first list of three names sent by the state government and sought a fresh list last week, sources revealed.
They said the Bengal government then sent the names of Agarwal — a 1990-batch IAS officer and currently the forest and disaster management secretary — Krishna Gupta (1991 batch) and Barun Kumar Roy (1992 batch).
“Agarwal was found fit for the position as he would retire in July 2026. Gupta is to retire in June 2026 and Roy in January 2027,” a source said, adding that the poll panel apparently thought that appointing Gupta might be cutting it too fine.
Another official said: “All the three candidates initially proposed by the state were relatively junior, and known to be close to the ruling dispensation. That’s why the commission sought another list.”
A retired bureaucrat explained: “CEOs have sometimes in the past been seen to be hesitant to take tough actions against the ruling party, given they knew they would have to serve under its government (if it retained power) after their posting asCEO ended.
“But if the CEO knows that he or she would be retiring shortly after holding the Assembly polls, the ruling establishment cannot exert pressure on them.”
The BJP government at the Centre sees the upcoming Bengal elections as crucial, and is expected to pull out the stops to win what it considers a trophy state, like it had done in 2021.
Agarwal’s selection comes at a time Bengal politics has started to simmer over allegations of the presence of “bogus voters” and dead voters in the electoral rolls.
Trinamool has accused the BJP of populating Bengal’s voter list with people from outside the state with the Election Commission’s help. The BJP has charged Trinamool with pressuring the state administration into retaining in the rolls the names of dead voters and those who have moved outside the state.
The BJP has told the poll panel it fears that the names of many of its supporters might be deleted from Bengal’s electoral rolls through Trinamool’s machinations.
“A revision of the electoral rolls will start in a few months; the Election Commission had therefore to be very careful about selecting the new CEO,” a source said. “Agarwal is known to be an upright officer; so, he was given the responsibility to handle the challenge.”
