West Bengal Assembly polls: BJP seeks CEO's intervention on proposed deployment of contractual employees

By Joymala Bagchi
Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], February 27 : Ahead of Assembly polls, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s West Bengal unit met the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) and sought intervention to ensure that contractual employees be not assigned poll duties on Saturday.
The representatives of BJP lodged a complaint against police officials for allegedly resorting to unfair means during election time and they are bringing up the issues as it is Election Commission's responsibility to arrange for free and fair polls.
After the meeting, BJP leader Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta told ANI, "We presented two principal issues to the CEO during the meeting. The first is related to indiscriminate deployment or proposed deployment of contractual government employees. In the poll process, normally government employees are deployed because they have a sense of accountability, they are accountable to someone. On the other hand, contractual employees are not accountable to anyone and this is what worries us considerably."
"We have urged the CEO to intervene in this matter and we brought this concrete example to his notice. He agreed that this is not a proper procedure to undertake. We want all contractual employees out of the polling process," he added.
BJP leaders also stated that their repeated requests for appointment with the Kolkata Police commissioner was also not being heard.
The Rajya Sabha MP said that the second issue that has been brought to the notice of the CEO was that of an alleged conspiracy by a section of police administration.
"We detect the conspiracy by section of the police administration particularly. We named three officers of the Kolkata police who are attempting to accumulate and collect all the Epicard and Aadhar Card of the various policemen. They are doing this so that the postal ballots which are legitimately due to policemen, come to those three officers and they can cast their votes on other policemen's behalf," he said.
"We have called for the immediate suspension of all the three policemen and that they should be nowhere involve in any poll duty. The CEO has promised to look into this," he added.
The Election Commission of India on Friday announced that West Bengal will witness eight-phased Assembly polls beginning March 27. The counting of votes will take place on May 2.
While TMC leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is seeking her third consecutive term, BJP has set a target of winning 200 seats in the 294-member state Assembly. Congress and the Left have stitched the alliance for the polls and had already finalised the seat-sharing agreement. They are also in touch with the Indian Secular Front (ISF), recently floated by influential minority leader Abbas Siddique.
In 2016, West Bengal Assembly elections, out of the 294 seats, Congress had managed to win 44 seats while the Left Front bagged 33 seats. The ruling TMC secured 211 seats and the BJP had won 3 seats.