Amid the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, the Election Commission is going to start preparations for the Assembly elections in the state, which is scheduled to take place between April and May next year.
A four-member delegation of the EC, led by Deputy Election Commissioner Gyanesh Bharti, which is currently in West Bengal to review the SIR exercise, will start the first round of checking of the EVMs on November 21. The team will meet all the District Magistrates and demonstrate EVMs that will be used in coming Assembly elections, sources said.
West Bengal has 80,681 booths, which will be increased to around 95,000 for the Assembly elections, an EC official said, adding around 1.30 lak ballot units and control units and more than 1.25 lakh VVPAT machines will be required.
“From September 15 to October 15, all the EVMs and VVPAT machines reached West Bengal in phases. The checking will start from November 21,” said a senior EC official.
“The process will start with the training of district officials and the checking process will be demonstrated before them. After that, the First Level Checking (FLC) of EVM will start in every district. During that, all political party’s representatives will have to be present,” the official added.
Meanwhile, the four-member EC team on Wednesday visited Nadia and reviewed the ongoing SIR exercise.
The team urged the Nadia district administration to complete the digitisation of the SIR records by November 26.
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Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal said the enumeration form distribution was proceeding smoothly.
The state has 7.66 crore electors, of which 7.64 crore Enumeration Forms have been distributed, accounting for 99.72 per cent, an official said, adding that digitisation has been done for 1.48 crore forms.
The team held a review meeting at the Krishnanagar DM office with Nadia District Magistrate Aneesh Dasgupta and senior officials, including ADMs, EROs (SDOs) and 18 BDOs. The meeting focused on assessing SIR progress and addressing field challenges faced by BLOs, including locating voters and photographing them.
The EC officials then travelled to Murshidabad and held another review meeting with district officers in the evening to monitor SIR digitisation and election preparations.
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On Thursday, the team will review the SIR process in Malda and Murshidabad districts.
After they return to Kolkata on November 21, the team on Friday will convene a meeting with all district magistrates and also join the FLC workshop. This is the EC team’s second visit to Bengal this month.
