Key Points

The 2022 list is supposed to be the basis for carrying out the SIR by the Commission this year. Insiders from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said that the matter would be brought to the notice of the ECI and permission would be sought to use the draft voters’ list for 2003 as the basis of the fresh SIR.

The sources said that, in the case of certain booths, the records of the 2002 post-SIR were not available at all. In some cases, the lists have been damaged in such a way that it is impossible to upload them to the Commission's server.

It is learnt that the majority of the polling booths, whose records are not available, are from South 24 Parganas, Howrah, North 24 Parganas, and Birbhum districts, all being traditional strongholds of Trinamool Congress.

The development has surfaced at a time when the ECI and the state government are at loggerheads over the Commission's suspension of four election officials posted in two Assembly constituencies in two districts of West Bengal. The four officials were suspended for their involvement in the wrongful addition of names to the electoral rolls of these two seats.

After the state government, earlier this week, intimated to the ECI that it would not currently comply with the order to suspend the four election officials, the Commission, on Tuesday, summoned the state Chief Secretary Manoj Pant to the ECI’s headquarters in Delhi by 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

Now all eyes are on the outcome of the meeting between Pant and ECI officials.

The complications on the issue of disciplinary action against the four election officers started from the beginning, with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee challenging the Commission's order. She said that no action would be taken against the four officers as all of them were state government employees.

The main charges against these four election officers are that they not only failed to perform their duties as EROs and AEROs while disposing of the applications, but also violated the policy of data security by sharing the login credentials of the election registration database with unauthorised persons.

If proven guilty, the punishment of the erring individuals will be imprisonment for a term of at least three months, but can extend to two years, and with a fine, as per legal provisions.

- IANS