50,000 offenders with NBW absconding

The circular from the EC was received by the state government on March 2,before which the state government had submitted a report to the EC mentioning that there are 68,000 cases of pending NBWs in the state. The offenders are accused of offences for which there are no provision of bail.

However,the police are sitting on the warrants.

Since March,the police have managed to only execute 20,301 pending warrants. When asked why so many cases of NBWs are pending in the police stations,a senior officer of West Bengal Police said: “We always try to execute the warrants. But we have several other works to do.”

“We are making all efforts to execute the pending warrants as per the EC circular. All the offenders are absconding. But our work will pick up in the next couple of weeks,” the officer added.

“Since we do not have any way to check the long list of offenders with the electoral roll,we can only depend

on the police on this issue. If these persons get identified at any booth then they can be arrested by the police. But the officials cannot take any step on this issue,” said Chief Electoral Officer Debashis Sen.