Kolkata, Feb 28 A day after the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused BJP of manipulating the voters’ list in the state through its appointed-agencies and taking into confidence some grassroots level staff involved in electoral enrolment process, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) clarified how the final voter’s list is prepared.
On Thursday, while addressing the extended organisational meeting of Trinamool Congress in Kolkata, the Chief Minister accused two alleged BJP-appointed agencies of reaching out to the data entry operators and implementing the malpractices in association with some errant block-level returning officers.
“They are linking the names of voters from other states with the EPIC number of voters in West Bengal,” the Chief Minister said on Thursday afternoon.
On Friday evening, the office of the CEO, West Bengal on the wall of its official X issued a statement claiming that as per provisions of the Representation Of The People Act, 1950, as well as the Manual on Electoral Rolls, the concerned booth level officer (BLO)s, Assistant Electoral Returning Officer (AERO)s, Electoral Returning Officer (ERO)s, District Electoral Officer (DEO)s and the CEOs in any state or Union Territory for upgrading electoral rolls.
“This is done with active participation of Booth Level Agents appointed by political parties. Any specific claim or objections are to be made first before the concerned 80,633 BLOs, 3,049 AEROs and 294 EROs in West Bengal,” the statement from the office of the CEO, West Bengal read.
However, none in the office of the CEO has given any clarification on why the same office had to give an explanatory statement on the process of upgrading of the voters’ list.
Incidentally, on Friday only the West Bengal Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari wrote a letter to the Election Commission of India (ECI) accusing the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of tarnishing the image of the new Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar at the party on Thursday.
--IANS
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