Bengal CEO to chair crucial all-party meet on SIR today

Kolkata, Oct 28 (IANS) The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, will chair a crucial all-party meeting at his office in central Kolkata later on Tuesday on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.

This is being held after the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced SIR on Monday.

It has been decided that there will be two-tier all-party meetings this time on the SIR issue before the full-fledged and ground-level exercise starts from November 4.

While the CEO will chair the state-level all-party meeting, with state leaders of all political parties at Kolkata during the day, there will be similar all-party meetings at the district level, which will be chaired by the District Magistrates concerned, who are also the District Electoral Officers.

After the all-party meeting, Agarwal will also brief the media on the outcome of the state-level party meeting and reply to other media queries on the SIR issue.

On Wednesday morning, the CEO will hold a virtual meeting with all District Electoral Officers (DEOs), Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), and Booth-Level Officers (BLOs) in the state.

During that meeting, the CEO is expected to give his subordinate electoral officers last-minute suggestions on the procedures to be followed after the ground-level revision exercise that will start on November 4.

The SIR will be conducted in three phases. In the first phase, the BLOs will reach every doorstep with the enumeration forms and collect the details of the voters concerned. At the end of the first phase, the draft voters’ list in the state will be announced.

Then, in the second stage, any political party or individual voter will be able to register their complaints on the draft list, which will be addressed by the ECI.

Then, in the third and final stage, the EROs will address the complaints received from individual political parties or individual voters, following which the final voters’ list will be published.

The entire process is expected to be completed by March 2026. West Bengal, along with three other states and one union territory, is slated to go for Assembly polls next year.

The last time the SIR was conducted in West Bengal was in 2002.

--IANS

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