EC receives list of 78 high-rises for polling booths

Kolkata: The EC has received a list of 78 high-rises, sent from the Bengal chief electoral officer's office, for setting up polling booths in the Assembly elections in the state."While rationalisation of polling stations, the commission will consider the list of 78 high-rises and decide where to set up booths," a senior EC official said on Wednesday.
DEOs of seven Bengal districts, including Kolkata North and Kolkata South, sent information on housing complexes, each with at least 300 or 500 voters, to the EC through the CEO office over a month ago. After selecting housing complexes, the commission will send proposals through DEOs to set up polling booths there.Bengal now has 80,681 booths and the EC had earlier said this number would increase by about 14,000. But in the changing situation, it might not happen, another commission official said. "Already 58 lakh absent, shifted, dead and duplicate voters' names were deleted from the draft SIR roll. If this trend reflects on the final list, too, the number of booths may come down," the official added. The EC normally sets up one booth for every 800-1,000 voters. Going by this arithmetic, the number of booths can easily decrease by around 5,800.The CEO's office received details of most of the 8,505 state govt Group-B officers; the office is in the process of issuing appointment letters to them as micro-observers.The Supreme Court in its order on Monday had said, "Let the state ensure that all 8,505 Group B officers/officials, whose list was handed over to the court, report to DEOs/EROs."