EC Asks WB Govt: Suspend 5 Staff, Start Proceedings, FIR for Adding Fake Voters’ Names

The Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday August 5, 2025 directed the West Bengal government to suspend five of its personnel from poll-related posts immediately and initiate disciplinary proceedings and lodge an FIR against them for “wrongful addition of names” in the voters’ list the Assembly constituencies of Baruipur Purba in South 24 Parganas and Moyna in East Midnapore-Representational Image

EC secretary Sujeet Kumar Mishra sent the direction to Chief Secretary Manoj Pant.

Kolkata: The Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday August 5, 2025 directed the West Bengal government to suspend five of its personnel from poll-related posts immediately and initiate disciplinary proceedings and lodge an FIR against them for “wrongful addition of names” in the voters’ list the Assembly constituencies of Baruipur Purba in South 24 Parganas and Moyna in East Midnapore.

EC secretary Sujeet Kumar Mishra sent the direction to Chief Secretary Manoj Pant. The step came after West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal sent a report to the EC on July 29 against the five employees, three of whom are officers of the 2012 batch of the West Bengal Civil Service (Executive) cadre.

The EC order stated, “It has been reported that the said officers have not only failed to perform duty as ERO and AERO while disposing off the applications but also violated the policy of data security while sharing their login credentials of the ER database with unauthorized persons.”

The five are: Debottam Dutta Choudhury, deputy project director (monitoring), district rural development cell in South 24 Parganas and electoral registration officer (ERO) of Baruipur Purba; Tathagata Mondal, assistant programme officer, MGNREGS at Joynagar-1 Block and assistant ERO (AERO) of Baruipur Purba; and Biplab Sarkar, district officer minority affairs in East Midnapore and ERO of Moyna.

The others are Sudipta Das, panchayat accounts and audit officer at Tamluk block and AERO of Moyna and a casual data entry operator Surojit Halder.