The Election Commission of India has asked the West Bengal Police to identify sensitive pockets across the state to ensure targeted deployment of security forces ahead of the Assembly elections scheduled later this year.
Officials aware of the developments said that 480 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) will be deployed in two phases:
240 companies on March 1 and another 240 on March 10.
“Sensitive pocket mapping is critical for calibrated force deployment and voter confidence,” a senior EC official said, as per a report of Hindustan Times. He further stated, “The deployment plan is being finalised in consultation with central observers and coordinated by the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).” Central observers have also been instructed to oversee the deployment process and submit daily reports to the Commission.
Supreme Court clarifies rules on electoral roll document submission
In a related development concerning the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the Supreme Court of India clarified that documents physically submitted to electoral registration officers (EROs) before the February 14 deadline must be accepted, even if they were not uploaded online. The court observed that since the uploading process itself is under dispute, all documents -whether uploaded digitally or submitted in person and received- must be taken into account during scrutiny.
The clarification follows concerns that over 115,000 applications in West Bengal remained unuploaded after the February 14 deadline.
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This prompted the Election Commission to issue show-cause notices to most of the state’s 294 EROs and 3,059 assistant electoral registration officers (AEROs), and to seek explanations from district election officers. The Commission had warned that failure to digitise hearing-related documents within the stipulated timeframe could lead to disciplinary action.
The scrutiny process is likely to have a direct impact on the number of additions or deletions reflected in the supplementary list, which will be released after the publication of the final electoral roll on February 28.
