Thaindian News

Kolkata, April 1 (IANS) Law and order situation in poll-bound West Bengal has improved but the Election Commission is not at all satisfied with it, a senior election official said Friday

“Law and order situation in the state is improving but we are not at all satisfied. A through monitoring of the situation is being conducted by the officials. In last month, three deaths of political activists and 94 incidences of political violence, resulting in injury of 120 people, were reported,” said state chief electoral officer Sunil Kumar Gupta.

“We have achieved success in executing non-bailable arresting warrants (NBW) pending against the criminals. At least 28,354 NBWs have been executed in the month of March and still 29,980 NBWs are pending,” he said.

A few months back, more than 75,000 such warrants were pending across the state.

Gupta also said that a total of 1,250 illegal firearms, including sophisticated arms, were seized in the state in March, as well as 2,021 cartridges, 7,124 kgs of bombs and 493 gelatin sticks.

People who own licensed firearms had been asked to deposit those and till now 12,164 licensed firearms were deposited across the state, he said.

“A video conference was held this (Friday) afternoon between the EC’s director general (expenditure monitoring) P.K. Dash and the expenditure observers and the assistant expenditure observers of nine districts where polls will be conducted during first two phases to review expenditure monitoring mechanism set up in each constituency,” said Gupta.

Another video conference will be held in the evening with the EC’s director general (Information Technology) Alok Shukla to review online election monitoring system.

“The entire election process, from the beginning of the polling in all polling booths till sealing of EVMs, will be monitored online by the senior election officials. Our system is ready and we will share it with Shukla,” said Gupta.

Deputy Election Commissioner Vinod Kumar Zutsi will hold a meeting with the CEOs and nodal officers of five poll-bound states April 4 in Delhi.

“Officials of ministry of home affairs, representatives of different security agencies and railway board members will attend the meeting. Movement of central paramilitary forces in the five poll-bound states will be discussed,” said Gupta.