Panchayat polls: Draft voter list likely on Nov 9, suggestions sought

KOLKATA: Senior Election Commission of India (ECI) officials held an all-party meeting with the representatives from the various political parties at the CEO office and sought suggestions from them regarding the publication of voter list draft, which is expected to be published on November 9.

According to sources, the opposition parties urged the ECI to remove the names of dead people from the voter list. They also told the ECI officials that block level officers should verify the list to ensure that the draft list is free from errors. The opposition parties also placed a demand that contractual workers under the state government should not be used as a part of the election machinery. Instead, the permanent government employees must be used in more numbers. Trinamool Congress's Aroop Biswas attended the meeting while Sisir Bajoria from BJP, Asit Majumdar from Congress and Kallol Mukherjee

from the Left Front took part in the meeting.

On November 9, the ECI will publish the voter list draft after which the rectification of the voter list will continue till December 8. It is expected that the CEO office will publish the final voter list on January 5. Due to scheduled panchayat elections next year, the State Election Commission will need an updated voter list. The State Election Commission will conduct Panchayat elections next year for which the voter list should be rectified.