Kolkata, March 9 – The full bench of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in West Bengal, which will review the ongoing judicial proceedings on voter documents identified as having "logical discrepancies" as well as the preparedness for the upcoming crucial Assembly elections, will begin on Monday at 10 a.m. with meetings with all registered political parties in the state.
The full bench of the Commission, led by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, arrived in Kolkata from New Delhi late on Sunday evening.
They were greeted at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata by West Bengal's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Manoj Kumar Agarwal, and the state's Chief Secretary, Nandini Chakraborty.
The first scheduled task of the full ECI bench will be to hold meetings with delegations from different registered political parties, with each party being allocated 10 minutes for interaction.
Trinamool Congress, being the ruling party in the state, will most likely be allocated the first slot of interaction with the ECI's full bench.
The six-member delegation from Trinamool Congress who will be present during the interaction will include two Lok Sabha members, Mahua Moitra and Kalyan Banerjee, one Rajya Sabha member, Samirul Islam, West Bengal Municipal Affairs and Urban Development Minister and Kolkata Municipal Corporation Mayor, Firhad Hakim, Minister of State for Finance (independent charge) Chandrima Bhattacharya, and Rajeev Kumar, the recently retired acting Director General of West Bengal Police, who is slated to become a Rajya Sabha member of the Trinamool Congress.
The scheduled time for meetings with delegations from different political parties is between 10 a.m. and 12 noon.
Around 12:30 p.m., CEO Manoj Kumar Agarwal will give a presentation to the Commission's full bench on the situation regarding judicial proceedings and election preparedness. The presentation is scheduled to last for about 30 minutes, as per the schedule provided by the CEO's office.
Thereafter, between 1:15 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. on Monday, the Commission's full bench will hold a meeting with representatives of different security and investigative agencies, both from the state and the Centre.
Approximately 24 agencies will be represented at the meeting, along with district magistrates and district police superintendents.
On March 10, the Commission's full bench will hold meetings with top bureaucrats and senior police officers of the state government, including Chief Secretary Nandini Chakraborty and the state's acting Director General of Police Peeyush Pandey.
This meeting will start at 10 a.m., followed by a press conference to be addressed by the CEC.
The Commission's full bench will return to Delhi later on March 10.
