Kolkata, March 4 – The office of the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has sent a detailed report to the Election Commission of India headquarters in New Delhi, highlighting deliberate negligence on the part of a section of electoral registration officers (EROs) and assistant electoral registration officers (AEROs) during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.
The CEO’s office has recommended disciplinary action for EROs and AEROs found guilty of deliberate negligence, while maintaining that the Commission will ultimately decide on this matter.
"In its report to the Commission, the CEO's office had specifically highlighted certain cases, where the concerned EROs and AEROs deliberately delayed the process of uploading documents received from voters during the hearing sessions. The instruction from the Commission was clear that such documents should be uploaded to the system on the same day they are received from the voters. However, a section of the EROs and AEROs deliberately kept the work of uploading documents pending until the last moment, which ultimately led to a large number of documents being referred for judicial adjudication," an insider from the CEO's office pointed out.
He also said that in its report to the Commission, the CEO's office had highlighted the identified cases of such deliberate delays in uploading documents, which ultimately led to those documents being referred for judicial adjudication.
On February 28, the final voter list in West Bengal was published, excluding the approximately 60 lakh cases that were referred for judicial adjudication, and it was decided that supplementary lists would be published as per the progress of the judicial adjudication.
Earlier this week, a statement war broke out between the West Bengal Civil Service (Executive) Officers' Association and the CEO's office over the questionable roles of certain EROs and AEROs during the revision exercise.
First, the association accused Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal of deliberately attributing the marking of certain names as "under adjudication" in the final electoral roll to the functioning of EROs and AEROs.
Just a few hours after a statement on this count was issued by the officers' body, the CEO's office refuted the allegation and issued a counter-statement claiming that it had not generally attributed all cases under adjudication to indecision by EROs and AEROs.
"However, a certain number of cases remained pending at the level of EROs/AEROs and were therefore referred for adjudication, which is factually verifiable. WBCSEOA cannot and should not assume the role of spokesperson for officers under deemed deputation to the ECI. Posting comments based on hearsay and attempts to discredit constitutional bodies or statutory authorities can have serious consequences. Government servants are well advised to function within the Lakshman Rekha of the applicable conduct rules," the counter-statement from the CEO's office read.