Special observers’ team to reach city today

With an aim to ensure free and fair elections, the Election Commission (EC) has decided to deploy special observers in the state to assess the law and order situation ahead of the election.

The teams will arrive in the city on Friday. Special observers dividing themselves in 5 teams will visit various districts in the State to monitor the law and order situation especially in the bordering districts and the Left Wing Extremism (LWE) divisions.

According to the sources in the Commission, the team of the special observers headed by the Chief Electoral Officers from the states like Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Punjab will visit all the districts and talk to the police or administrative officials in the districts. The five teams of the special observers will visit various places from March 18 to March 22 and then will submit a report to the Election Commission on March 23 on the basis of the their observations.

The special observer who will be in the charge of North and South 24 Parganas and Kolkata will be from Karnataka, while Purulia, Bankura, Burdwan and Birbhum will get the special observer from Himachal Pradesh. Malda and North & South Dinajpur will have an officer from Chhattisgarh. North Bengal districts like Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling will have a special election observer from Mizoram.

It may mentioned that a Senior Election official in the state on Wednesday said that three categories of observers—general observers, expenditure observers and police observers will be in the state to monitor the situation. The Commission had announced that 193 general observers, 66 expenditure observers and 21 police observers in the state.