Kolkata: West Bengal will go for the crucial Assembly elections next year with an almost 17 per cent increase in the number of polling booths than during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections.
An insider from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) said that the polling in the previous two elections was conducted with a total network of 80,680 booths.
However, insiders added that the 2026 Assembly elections will be with a network of a little over 94,000 booths, a 16.50 per cent rise over the number of booths in the previous polls.
Explaining the reason behind the increase in the number of booths, the CEO office insiders said that as per the directive of the Election Commission of India (ECI), this time the total number of voters in a single booth should not exceed 1,200, and hence, to accommodate that, the number of booths had to be increased.
The insiders said that all the political parties in the state have been updated about the increase in the number of polling booths.
On Thursday evening, the CEO’s office had communicated to the ECI that the ground work was ready to begin the process of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.
The communication on this count was sent to the ECI’s headquarters in Delhi after the CEO’s office compiled the reports sent by different district election officers on the ground-level preparedness for the SIR at respective districts.
The last time that SIR was conducted in West Bengal was in 2002.
During the current year, the SIR process has been completed recently in neighbouring Bihar, where the polls are scheduled later this year.
The SIR in West Bengal is expected to start anytime now amid the continuing political slugfest over the exercise.
On one hand, the ruling Trinamool Congress has described the revision exercise as a ploy by the BJP to slap the NRC in West Bengal. The Trinamool Congress had also accused ECI of operating on the behest of the BJP to ensure the latter’s victory in the Assembly elections.
On the other hand, the BJP had claimed that the Trinamool Congress and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee were opposing the SIR out of fear that names of many illegal Rohingya and Bangladeshi infiltrators would be deleted from the list following the revision exercise.
(IANS)
