Kolkata, February 14 (). The Election Commission of India (ECI) has set a deadline for the West Bengal government to file FIR against those election officials against whom the Commission has found concrete evidence of their involvement in inclusion of names of fake voters in the voter list during the ongoing Special Intensive Review (SIR) in the state.
An insider in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal said that the Commission sent a new communication in this regard to the State Secretariat on Saturday evening, in which the deadline for filing FIR against these errant electoral officials was fixed as February 17 (Tuesday).
“The ECI found that despite repeated reminders to file FIR against these four errant electoral officials, the state government was negligent in initiating action. Hence, the commission decided to fix a deadline for filing FIR against them,” said an insider in the CEO office.
Two of the four officers against whom FIR has been directed are Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) of Baruipur East assembly constituency in South 24 Parganas district, Debottam Dutta Choudhary and Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) of the same area, Tathagata Mandal.
The remaining two officers are ERO Biplab Sarkar of Moyna assembly constituency in East Midnapore district and AERO Sudipta Das of the same area.
Remember that in August last year, the ECI Headquarters in New Delhi had directed the West Bengal government to suspend these four election officials and register an FIR against them.
The officials were accused of tampering with the voter list. Based on these allegations, the ECI had directed to suspend the officials and register an FIR against them.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had at that time criticized the ECI directive and accused the Election Commission of working like ‘bonded laborers of the BJP’. He also said that his government will not take action against its employees.
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SCH