KOLKATA: Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is scheduled to hold a series of meetings with senior officials and police officers in West Bengal on Tuesday to review preparedness for the upcoming assembly elections, officials said.
The CEC will also hold a press conference amid controversies over alleged arbitrary deletions in the post-SIR electoral rolls.
Kumar, along with election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, is scheduled to hold meetings with West Bengal Chief Secretary Nandini Chakravorty, Director General of Police (DGP) Piyush Pandey and other senior officials to assess election-related arrangements in the state.
The poll panel will also review coordination between the state administration and security agencies, including the deployment of central armed police forces, the officials said.
The commission is scheduled to hold a meeting with the chief electoral officer of West Bengal, the state police nodal officer and the CAPF nodal officer to review logistical arrangements and security planning, an official of the CEO's office said.
The commission is also expected to interact with booth-level officers (BLOs) and hold a press conference later in the day.
The meetings are part of the programmes during the Election Commission's three-day visit to West Bengal to review poll preparedness for the upcoming assembly elections in the state.
On Monday, the full bench of the commission met representatives of political parties in Kolkata.
The political parties suggested that the elections be conducted in one or two phases, and urged the commission to take stringent measures to curb intimidation of voters and activities of anti-social elements during the polls.
"A wide range of issues concerning the conduct of elections in the state were discussed.
Several parties suggested that the elections be held in one or two phases and assured their cooperation in ensuring that the polls remain peaceful," a senior Election Commission official said.
During meetings on Monday, the CEC warned that any lapse in maintaining law and order ahead of the elections would not be tolerated and stressed the need for strict monitoring to ensure free and fair polls.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had accused Kumar of threatening state officials during a meeting with the administration and warned that "false bravado" by constitutional authorities was not acceptable, stepping up the confrontation between the state government and the poll panel.
Speaking from the site of her dharna in central Kolkata against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, Banerjee alleged that the chief election commissioner had adopted a threatening tone towards the state bureaucracy.