on Friday to discuss the setting up of booths saw heated discussions erupt on an issue that was not even on the agenda — the proposed Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls ahead of next year's Assembly polls.
Bengal chief electoral officer Manoj Agarwal had to step in to prevent the meeting from getting derailed, saying the SIR was "not part of today's agenda".
Pant called the meeting to deliberate on the setting up of 13,816 additional polling booths before the Assembly elections. The state currently has 80,681 booths.
More booths need to be set up because of the EC mandate that each cannot have more than 1,200 voters.
Right at the start of the meeting, all parties — Trinamool, BJP, Congress and Left — contested the EC's claims that the parties did not object to the booth reorganisation plan.
The parties said they did, at meetings with district election officers.
But before the discussion could continue, BJP general secretary Jagannath Chatterjee raised the issue of the proposed SIR in the state.
The Trinamool delegation, led by power minister Aroop Biswas, opposed the SIR. And so did Congress and CPM.
Biswas later told reporters, "Trinamool is against SIR. This has been repeatedly expressed by CM Mamata Banerjee and national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.
The democratic rights of people cannot be snatched away in the name of SIR."
Taking a dig at EC, he said, "The question is whether the umpire or referee is neutral or not. The referee cannot be biased and support a party. If the referee isn't fair, then the democratic rights of the people cannot be protected."
Congress leader Asutosh Chatterjee, too, opposed SIR but stressed the need to remove bogus voters for free and fair polls.
Former CPM MP Samik Lahiri toed the same line on SIR and demanded that the poll panel play a unbiased role.
To cut short the SIR debate, CEO Agarwal had to remind the parties that the issue was not a part of the meeting's agenda.
On booth reorganisation, Biswas told reporters, "The exercise should not inconvenience voters. Say a booth has 1,500 voters. The excess 300 cannot be allotted a booth several miles away. We want them to be enrolled in a different booth on the same premises."
Agarwal said the parties have till September 8 to submit their views on reorganisation of booths.
Officials said the discontent in most places is over 4-5% of booths. Agarwal later told the media that the booth-level officers are being appointed according to EC norms and the additional booths are being set up keeping in mind the poll panel's rule that no booth should be located more 5 km from a voter's address.