Chief Electoral Officer Aariz Aftab on Saturday had written a letter to District Election Officers (DEO) and has asked them to conduct a first level checking of all the EVM and VVPAT machines.
In a letter to five district election officers including Kolkata, North and South 24 Parganas, Nadia and Cooch Behar, Aftab directed that first level checking should be conducted at the earliest and by maintaining pandemic protocol.
According to West Bengal Election Commission sources, the checking will commence on August 3 and will be completed by August 6.
“Though the dates of the bypolls are yet to be decided by the Commission, the first level checking is the first step towards the polls. Total 62 engineers are commissioned to check 3414 EVM and equal number of VVPATs,” said the sources.
Notably, a delegation of six TMC MPs met Chief election Commissioner Sushil Chandra over the bypoll issue at the national capital on July 14 and all the MPs said that their meeting had ended on a positive note.
Incidentally, citing pandemic situation the BJP is asking the ruling Trinamool Congress to hold the civic polls before the bypolls.
It can be recalled that the election of Murshidabad’s Jangipur and Samshergunj was cancelled earlier due to the death of the candidates by being affected by Covid.
Later, due to the second wave of Covid along with two Assembly seats five more Assembly seats were attached. Dinhata, Khardaha, Shantipur, Gosaba and Bhawanipore seat will also go for bypolls.
Meanwhile, Election Commission of India (ECI) floated a notice over bypoll in Rajya Sabha as the then TMC leader and Rajya Sabha MP Dinesh Trivedi had resigned from Rajya Sabha to join the BJP.
The notice from ECI states that the election should have to be completed by August 11.
According to TMC sources three names are coming up for this post namely state general secretary and spokesperson Kunal Ghosh, former West Bengal Minister of Agriculture Purnendu Bose and former Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha.
Notably, Kunal Ghosh was earlier TMC’s Rajya Sabha MP before his name appeared in ponzi chit fund scam.
