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The Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal, connected Wednesday (October 29, 2025) started the grooming process of Electoral Registration Officers (ERO), District Election Officers (DEO), and different officers who volition portion of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rotation successful the State. Meanwhile, the Left party leaders staged a protestation extracurricular the CEO office to dependable their concerns against the SIR process.
“Training connected SIR volition beryllium held contiguous with each DEOs, EROs, AEROs, SLMT successful Video Conference mode by CEO West Bengal on with different Officers from today. Senior DEC, ECI and different ECI Officers are besides taking portion successful the discussion,” an authoritative astatine the CEO, West Bengal bureau said connected Wednesday.
In a related development, the Election Commission of India (ECI) started a National Voter Helpline and each 36 State and District-level helplines to code queries and grievances of Indian voters.
They person besides started a ‘Book-a-Call with BLO’ installation wherever voters successful each determination tin telephone their respective country BLOs to enquire astir their questions.
In an all-party gathering held astatine the CEO, West Bengal bureau successful Kolkata connected Tuesday, governmental parties similar Trinamool Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) raised questions astir “genuine voters” being excluded successful the “hurried” SIR process.
To code the concern, Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal Manoj Kumar Agarwal, said that ‘no morganatic voters’ volition beryllium removed from the voters’ database during the process.
According to figures shared by the CEO’s office, the full fig of electors successful West Bengal arsenic of October 28, 2025, stands astatine 7,66,37,529, with an mean of astir 950 voters oregon 200 to 300 families per polling station. The fig of BLOs stand at 80,681 successful West Bengal. They are acceptable to commencement a door-to-door workout to manus retired enumeration forms betwixt November 4 to December 4.
Political leaders protest
Left Front parties similar the CPI(M), Revolutionary Socialist Party, Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist), and Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation leaders were contiguous astatine the protestation extracurricular the CEO, West Bengal bureau successful Kolkata connected Wednesday. They protested under veteran politician, CPI(M) Biman Basu’s leadership.
“The process needs to beryllium transparent. There tin beryllium nary enactment authorities successful this, truthful that communal citizens bash not person to carnivore the whole load, the Block Level Officers (BLOs) indispensable besides instrumentality responsibility,” Mr. Basu said aft the protests.
Meanwhile, Congress State President Subhankar Sarkar besides raised questions astir the SIR process and said that it is raising panic among the radical of Bengal.
“When radical are perpetually disquieted astir their livelihood, it is the work of the authorities authorities to take attraction of the lives of the communal man... Instead, present they are being asked questions astir their citizenship, this is dire situation. This is simply a origin of concern, we are frightened astir the aboriginal of Bengal,” Mr. Sarkar added.
He besides raised questions astir wherefore the SIR process is being conducted wrong such a abbreviated period of clip and dissimilar the 2002 SIR wherever it took 2 years to implicit the whole process. “Why dispersed fearfulness successful radical earlier the 2026 elections?” Mr. Sarkar asked.
