EC orders action against 19 West Bengal officials

The EC expressed serious concern on slow deletion of names of voters who were dead or who had shifted somewhere else. “Work in this respect was far from satisfactory in municipal areas,” it said. The EC will continue to delete such names even after publication of the rolls, scheduled for February 22.

Nine of those on the EC’s list are WBCS officers. These include two sub-divisional officers (SDOs), six Block Development Officers (BDOs) and one Joint BDO.

With today’s directive, the number of state government officers and employees against whom the EC has taken action so far is up to 24.

In Kolkata, an all-party meeting was held at the CEO’s office today to decide on the 3,350 polling booths, which fall within 200 metres of political party offices. As per the EC directive, all these booths will have to be relocated or closed on polling day. While the CPI(M) demanded that district and state headquarters of party offices be exempted, the Congress said they should be closed immediately. “There was no consensus in the meeting, so we have told them to submit their views by February 21,” Sen said.