Voter list manipulation: EC orders FIRs against five poll officials

Kolkata: The Election Commission of India on Friday directed the concerned District Electoral Officers (DEOs) to lodge FIRs against five election-linked personnel—two Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), two Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs), and a temporary data entry operator—for alleged manipulation of electoral rolls in West Bengal.

The action relates to the Baruipur East Assembly constituency in South 24-Parganas and the Moyna Assembly Constituency in East Midnapore. The Commission had earlier ordered departmental enquiries against the five for disciplinary misconduct.

The proceedings were initiated even before the start of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in the state. Those named include Debottam Dutta Chowdhury, ERO of Baruipur East, and Biplab Sarkar, ERO of Moyna. Debottam Dutta Chowdhury is currently posted as Project Director (Monitoring), Rural Development Cell, South 24 Parganas, while Biplab Sarkar serves in the Minority Affairs Department of East Midnapore.

The two AEROs—Tathagata Mandal and Sudipto Das—are posted as Assistant Project Officer under the MGNREGA scheme in Jaynagar-I block, South 24 Parganas, and as Panchayat Audit and Accounts Officer in Tamluk block, respectively. The fifth person is Surajit Halder, a temporary data entry operator from the Moyna Assembly constituency.

According to the Commission, the allegation centres on the sharing of login IDs for the Election Commission’s database with departmental staff to facilitate the illegal addition of names to the voter list. The data entry operator was aware of these credentials. As per protocol, database access requires a one-time password (OTP) sent to the registered mobile number of the ERO. In this case, the OTP received on the ERO’s registered number was allegedly shared with others, in violation of established rules.