Review additions to electoral roll to weed out ‘fictitious' voters: Bengal CEO to DEOs

Indian Express

6 days ago

The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal has directed all the District Election Officers (DEOs) to conduct sampling of one per cent of Form 6 disbursed in the past one year to check if any 'fictitious' voters were added to the electoral rolls.
West Bengal will go to the Assembly polls early next year.
In a letter to the DEOs and DMs, CEO Manoj Agarwal directed them to form a team of senior officers to check the disbursed Form 6 in their respective districts and submit a report by August 14.
'Sample checking of less than 1 per cent Form 6 disposals by the EROs (Electoral Registration Officers) during continuous updation has revealed a considerable number of Form 6 for fictitious voters. In all these cases, BLOs verification was dispensed with, without any apparent urgency/requirement and similar documents were captured for a large number of application forms and their verification reports,' the CEO wrote.
The CEO has also ordered that the OC Election, posted in the BDO Office, and the casual and daily wages contractual data entry operators should not be involved in the disposal of the forms or any of the functions and duties in ERONet, the electoral roll management system.
'The EROs have since admitted that they had provided user access to the ERO net to the AERO/OC Election in BDO Office/ Casual Data Entry Operators who had thereafter disposed of the Form 6 applications. While appropriate action in these and other cases is being contemplated, District Election Officers are hereby directed to form a team of senior officers and have the sample checking of all Form 6 disposals done during the last one year and send a report to the undersigned by 14th August, 2025 positively,' the July 28 letter stated.
Reacting to the report, BJP MLA and Leader of Opposition in Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, demanded a probe, accusing the TMC government in the state of 'rigging the electoral system'.
'This latest memo from the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal to all the District Election Officers (DMs) exposes a scandalous betrayal of democracy… Fictitious Voters added to the rolls and unauthorized meddling by Casual Data Entry Operators IS THE DEPTH OF CORRUPTION UNDER MAMATA BANERJEE'S RULE. Booth Level Officers pressured to fudge records, Electoral Registration Officers handing over Voter Lists related jobs to unqualified hands is an assault on every citizen's right to participate in a fair election,' Adhikari posted on X.
West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal is in New Delhi to meet Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the implementation of the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral roll, which is currently being conducted in neighbouring poll-bound Bihar, sources said.
According to sources in the state election commission, Agarwal will discuss with the CEC on the timeline of conducting the SIR and the necessary preparations for it.
Earlier, the CEO started the SIR training workshop for the Booth Level Officials (BLOs) from Saturday. 'The SIR may be held in the future in the state. Training will not take place again and again. Since the Assembly election is six to eight months away, we will not be able to conduct these training workshops again,' Agarwal had said earlier. ENS
Recently, the Chief Electoral Officer made voter lists from the 2002 electoral roll revision available online, sparking speculation that the exercise will begin in the state in August.