Bengal’s final electoral roll unlikely before end of this month, says CEO

Kolkata: The final electoral roll in the state is unlikely to be published before Feb 28, the Bengal CEO office indicated on Monday after the apex court hearing."I will try my level best so that the roll preparation is complete and approval of the EC is obtained for publishing the final roll before the end of this month," Bengal chief electoral officer Manoj Agarwal said on Monday.
He, however, quickly added, "The Supreme Court gave an additional 7 days to the EROs post Feb 14. After the EROs complete their work, the DEOs, roll observers and the CEO will have to super-check everything, and the CEO will have to ensure the roll health, particularly. The entire exercise will take at least 7 days. Then the commission will need 3-4 days to publish the final roll."Agarwal wrote to EC on Feb 7, seeking extension of deadline for hearing and verification by a week to Feb 14.In its submission to the Supreme Court on Monday, the state said that it sent a list of close to 8,500 officers to the EC for the role of the micro observers.Replying to a specific query on the state's list, a senior official at the Bengal CEO office said, "We did not receive any such list from the state. The DEOs might have got it."The official also said that now over 8,000 micro observers, who are staff of the central govt, central PSUs and nationalised banks, are being deployed in the SIR-related work."Now, this number will increase to approximately 17,000. We don't know when 8,500 state govt officials will come and how many of them will join. We are also in the dark about their training. But, once they join, the workload of our existing micro observers will be reduced to some extent," he said, adding that 90% of micro observers who are being deputed by the EC understand Bengali well.According to a source at EC, the CEO needs 1-2 days to issue appointment letters to 8,500-odd state officials to be deputed as micro observers. Then, they will have to undergo training for at least 2 days. "The EC will take another 5-7 days to provide them with the required login. Therefore, if the appointment letters are issued on Tuesday, then they will be on the ground for the work after 8 days minimum from today," the source said."The state administration is already grappling with a shortage of officers. Will any officer remain with the administration if the govt provides us with 8,500 officers?" another EC source asked, while adding that the state list may originally include all sanctioned posts of officers, not today's actual number.Meanwhile, the CEO claimed that a little over 1 crore documents received in the hearing were uploaded for verification, and most of them are also being verified.Agarwal will attend a preparatory meeting at the Nirvachan Sadan on Tuesday to discuss issues like publication of the final roll, EC's full bench visit to Bengal, notification of elections and counting of votes, sources said.