KOLKATA: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Saturday in a move to intensify the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal appointed four more IAS officers associated with different ministries in Delhi as Special Roll Observers (SROs).
A month ago, the ECI had appointed first batch of five senior bureaucrats from ministries like Home Affairs, Defence, Finance, Rural Development and Information and Broadcasting for electoral roll revision drive in the State.
Today, the national poll panel appointed Dr Sailesh, deputy secretary of National Health Authority; Ratan Biswas, Director Census Operation, Tripura; Sandeep Rewaji Rathod, Director, Department of Sports, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports and Vikash Singh, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
The Commission in its letter written to the four bureaucrats separately has informed that their appointments as SROs were made to ‘ensure that no eligible person is left out from enrolment and that no ineligible elector in included in the electoral roll.’
The second phase of the three-tier SIR process began after the draft roll was published on 16 December.
Earlier on 8 December last year, five bureaucrats, Neeraj kumar Bansor (Home Affairs), Kumar Ravikant Singh (Defence), Alok Tiwari (Finance), Pankaj Yadav (Rural Development) and Krishna kumar Nirala (Information and Broadcasting) in the rank of joint secretaries were appointed to look after SIR drive in five divisions like Midnapore, Presidency, Malda, Jalpaiguri and Bardhaman separately in the State.
They will work as micro-observers.
The national poll body had also engaged Dr Subrata Gupta, retired IAS and former secretary of the Union Food Processing Ministry as the SRO in charge of the State and 12 others serving IAS officers of West Bengal cadre in the SIR process.
All the SROs and 12 other IAS officers will work in coordination with the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal in Kolkata.
According to the ECI sources, the additional team of four new SROs have been engaged for the process in a bid to strengthen the second stage of the electoral roll revision process so that no genuine voter is deleted from the list and at the same time no dead, duplicate, absent and permanently shifted voter is included to the SIR list.
This time, the national poll body wants the final voters’ list to be decisive and error-free.
This stage involves the filing of claims and objections, along with the notice period for issuing, hearing, verifying and disposing of applications, all of which will be carried out simultaneously by the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs).
Once the second stage is completed, the final version of the electoral roll will be published on 14 February.
The announcement of dates for the West Bengal Assembly elections is expected shortly. Sources in the ECI said that around 58 lakh dead, duplicate, permanently shifted and absent voters have been deleted so far.
The Commission has identified around 24 lakh people dead out the 55 lakh deleted voters.
The national poll panel has also instructed electoral officers to intensify progeny mapping, after irregularities were found in parental details in the current voter rolls as of 27 October.
The exercise compares parental information on the latest list with records from 2002, when the last SIR was conducted in the State.