The West Bengal government is likely to decide on Monday regarding the Election Commission of India’s (ECI’s) order to suspend and lodge cases against five officials over the alleged fraudulent registration of voters in two Assembly constituencies.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is scheduled to hold a meeting with Chief Secretary Manoj Pant on Monday.

Following a meeting in Delhi on Wednesday, the ECI had given Pant seven days to act on its order to suspend four officers, remove a data entry operator, and file FIRs—a decision Pant is learnt to have said he would take only after consulting the state government. However, due to a few holidays, this consultation did not take place.

“It was scheduled that the chief minister would consult the chief secretary on Monday to decide the further course of action. They will also seek a legal opinion. Until now, the CM has been adamant on not taking action against those officials, but now, it is to be seen how the chief secretary will convince her,” a senior government official said.

Banerjee is scheduled to convene a Cabinet meeting on Monday, the official said. “After that, she will go north Bengal for a three-day tour. So, she will come back on either August 20 or 21 when the ECI’s deadline will be over. We are expecting that whatever decision will be taken, we will know on Monday,” the official added.

Pant, who was summoned to Delhi over the non-compliance of the EC’s order last week to act against the five officials, reportedly met election commissioners Gyanesh Kumar, Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu for over an hour at the poll panel’s headquarters. In the meeting, he is understood to have told the EC that inquiries had been initiated against the officials and action would follow based on the findings.

The meeting came days after Banerjee publicly vowed to protect state government employees. “We will not suspend them… I will continue to be your pehredar (guard),” she said at a public meeting in Jhargram last week.

Earlier, Pant had written to the EC, calling the suspension and FIRs “disproportionately harsh” with a “demoralising impact” on Bengal’s officers’ community.