11 lakh yet to get forms; no deadline extension, says EC

Kolkata: Officials of Election Commission's office in Delhi asked the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) to complete distribution of forms by Sunday and emphasised that there will be no extension of Dec 4 deadline for submission and uploading of forms, not even by a few hours. Eleven lakh out of 7.6 crore electors in the state are yet to get forms from BLOs.

The EC pulled up the DMs of West Burdwan and South 24 Parganas, where the form distribution is yet to be completed. "Why has the work not been completed yet?" sources quoted the EC as asking the DMs. Over 7.5 crore (98.50%) forms had been distributed in the state till 6 pm on Saturday.

At the virtual meeting, EC officials told the Bengal CEO that he was at liberty to requisition more manpower if needed as all state employees can be used for this as per Article 324 (6) of the Constitution.


Booth-level officers (BLOs), who have begun collecting the filled-up forms, are demanding additional manpower as the process of uploading the information of an elector on to the BLO app is taking around 20 minutes. BLOs pointed out that at the current pace, they will be able to upload 24 forms at the most in a day or just over 450 forms by the Dec 4 deadline. Each BLO is required to upload around 1,000-1,200 forms.

Almost halfway into the time allocated for SIR form distribution, fill-up and collection, a section of Election Commission officials acknowledged that the task to complete the exercise by Dec 4 was an uphill one and needed to be expedited.

Officials at the West Bengal CEO said that if the EC permits involving BLO supervisors, Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) in the data entry and forms uploading work along with BLOs, the entire process will gain momentum.

Aware of the time crunch, the CEO had written a letter to the EC, seeking its permission to add more manpower in the data entry work besides the BLO. For every assembly constituency, there is an ERO who has around 10 AEROs. However, a section of the officials is sceptical of involving others as BLO supervisors don't have login access to the system.

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