After deploying Central forces outside the West Bengal Chief Electoral Office in Kolkata, the Election Commission (EC) is considering using them to provide security to special roll observers following incidents of gherao and attack on them during the ongoing hearing in the SIR exercise.

On Monday, TMC workers reportedly disrupted hearings at three places over the EC’s decision not to allow party-affiliated Booth Level Assistants (BLAs) at the hearings.

Recently, a convoy of one of the special roll observers, C Murugan, was attacked at Magrahat in South 24 Parganas district. He was previously also gheraoed in Falta by voters over the deletions of names in the draft roll.

After the attack, special roll observer Subrata Gupta and state Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal both wrote letters to the EC to give adequate security for special roll observers.

Meanwhile, Deputy Election Commissioner Gyanesh Bharti reached Kolkata on Tuesday for a two-day visit to oversee the SIR process.

During a meeting with all the DEOs, Bharti said that till date, many irregularities have been found in the enumeration form upload and also during the hearings.

In some cases, more than a hundred people were mapped with the same father or mother, he said, and directed all DEOs to take immediate action in such cases.

He also alerted DEOs that, during the hearing, no documents should be taken that are not mentioned in the EC order.

“If those documents are taken, those cases will be canceled during verification,” an EC official said.

Bharti also said that only DEOs will be authorised to verify documents given in the hearing. They can’t divert the verification process to other officials or the EROs, he reportedly said.