SIR: ECI reviewing Suvendu Adhikari's protocol violation complaint against three West Bengal DMs

Kolkata, Nov 22 The Election Commission of India (ECI) is reviewing complaints received from the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, against three District Magistrates, who are also the District Election Officers (DEOs), claiming that they were not following the poll panel's protocols for Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.

The three District Magistrates against whom Adhikari had registered complaints to the ECI are from his native district of East Midnapore, besides those of Hooghly and East Burdwan.

Adhikari confirmed that he had registered the complaints against the three District Magistrates with the central ECI team, who visited West Bengal to review the progress of the ongoing SIR exercise in the state.

"I informed the commission delegation on how the three District Magistrates were operating in a manner that violated the commission-mandated protocol while conducting the revision exercise. There had been complaints against them of putting undue pressure on the booth-level officers," the leader of the opposition.

Confirming receipt of the complaint from the leader of the opposition, sources in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said the commission is reviewing the complaints, considering the seriousness of the charges made by Adhikari.

The leader of the opposition had been extremely vocal against the role of the District Magistrates, as well as the DEOs.

On Thursday, he issued a statement claiming to float an explosive allegation that the pressure on the BLOs was not due to the SIR-related workload, as asserted by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, but because District Magistrates were forcing them to engage in "unethical practices" during the voter list revision exercise.

In the statement, the leader of the opposition alleged that districts like East Midnapore, Hooghly, and East Burdwan, among others, the District Magistrates, as well as the DEOs, were acting as full-time Trinamool Congress election agents by putting pressure on the BLOs to share official OTPs either with the district magistrates or with the ruling party activists appointed as the data entry operators.

According to the leader of the opposition, this "unethical pressure" on the BLOs was intended to "misuse" the BLO App to tamper with the voter list that is currently being cleaned through the SIR process.

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