Election Commission to Bengal officials: Verify rolls, exclude foreigners

Kolkata: Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on Friday gave a clear message that no foreigners (non Indians) should be part of the Bengal electoral list while names of no Indians should be omitted from the final electoral rolls in Bengal.

A high level meeting was conducted today on the progress of Bengal SIR, with the final electoral roll scheduled to be published on February 28. CEC gave the message today during a virtual meeting with West Bengal CEO Manoj Kumar Agarwal, all Rolls Observers, top officials of CEO's office and all the DEOs.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) full bench held a virtual meeting today, a day ahead of the last day of the hearing, which ends on February 14, which is an extended date. During the full bench virtual meeting with West Bengal CEO Manoj Kumar Agarwal, all top officials of CEO's office, Rolls observers and all the DEOs, it was made clear that the verification of the documents is the prime focus at the moment, sources informed.


"The message from the CEC was clear- scrutinize, verify and reverify the documents, if necessary, as the dates have been extended. There should be no mistakes in the roll," CEC Kumar reportedly said in the meeting. A top EC official quotiong Kumar told ET.Ahead of the meeting Agarwal told mediapersons that today's meeting was on Bengal SIR and its progress.

"The SIR review was done. "After the date extension, the ERO and AEROs should complete the work by February 21. The final roll has to be prepared by February 28," CEO said. During the process of supercheking of the documents, a lot of discrepancies have been found in the documents that have been uploaded during the SIR hearing process.

Meanwhile, it has been learnt that the ECI has summoned Nandini Chakraborty Chief Secretary to Delhi today by 3 PM over non-compliance over several issues. Last August, the full bench of the Commission summoned the then Chief Secretary Manoj Pant to Delhi over the state government's reluctance to implement the Election Commission's order to suspend the ERO and AERO of Baruipur East and East Midnapore's Moina and several other cases.

Following that suspension of a BDO and several issues were directed.