The Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal Manoj Kumar Agarwal addresses the media on November 24, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Moyurie Som
The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal Manoj Kumar Agarwal on Monday (November 24, 2025) said that he met with officials of the Ministry of Telecom and representatives of all telecom service providers to ensure uninterrupted internet connectivity for the digitisation of enumeration forms by booth-level officials during the Special Intensive Revision for West Bengal’s electoral roll.
This comes in the wake of a section of BLOs raising concerns around the unavailability of high-speed internet necessary for the digitisation process of enumeration forms. Disgruntled BLOs also claimed that the task of digitising thousands of enumeration forms through the BLO mobile app has added to their mounting workload, and has become especially unmanageable for the older BLOs who aren’t technologically savvy.
“Connectivity issues can be there in a few places for a few hours or few days but the problem isn’t there for the whole time to come. The black zones are very few in number. We have told the block development officers and district election officials that centralised spaces can be there with wi-fi connectivity. Many people can sit together and do the digitisation work there,” he said.
On Monday (November 24, 2025), Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar raising questions on why the CEO’s office floated a Request for Proposal for hiring 1,000 data entry operators and 50 software developers for a period of one year.
“When district offices already have a substantial number of competent professionals performing such functions, what necessitates the CEO’s initiative to outsource the same work through an external agency for a full year?” the Chief Minister asked in her letter.
This assumes significance in light of demands raised by a section of BLOs for the appointment of data entry operators to digitise all enumeration forms by December 4 amidst complaints of the workload becoming untenable alongside their regular jobs and door-to-door visits for SIR.
On Monday (November 24, 2025), hundreds of BLOs gathered outside the CEO’s office to protest amidst heavy police deployment in the area.
“It is a policy decision of the Election Commission of India not to use contractual data entry operators. It was only on the advice of ECI the tender was taken out, in consonance with the tender as taken out in Bihar, and it has been sent to the finance department for approval. All the due process has been maintained,” Mr Agarwal said on Monday.
He added that 14,997 new polling booths are on the brink of approval and that the same number of additional BLOs have been mobilised for the same.
As of now, 80,681 BLOs are working for an equal number of polling booths across 294 assembly constituencies. Each polling booth roughly has 950 to 1000 electors.
‘Uncollectable forms’
The CEO further said that any form that is not received by election officials signed by the elector will be deleted from the draft roll. As of 4 p.m. on November 24, 10.33 lakh enumeration forms have not been collected by electors.
“This applies to cases where the electors have permanently shifted or are absent. We are going by the address as of October 27, 2025. If the address or building doesn’t exist, the BLO goes thrice and checks with locals and booth-level agents. When there’s no scope at all, they become ‘uncollectable’,” Mr. Agarwal said, responding to a question by The Hindu.
He added that the names of electors whose names were on the voters list as of October 27 this year but would be missing from the draft roll during SIR on grounds of not collecting the enumeration form, will be divided into four to five categories and published in the public domain.
“So if anybody (cannot find their) name in the draft list, they can make an appeal or complain or change their details after the draft roll is published,” the CEO said.
Published – November 25, 2025 04:23 am IST
