Kolkata, March 10 (IANS) Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, on Tuesday morning said that the forthcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal, scheduled to be held later this year, will be totally fair and violence-free.

“I convey my greetings to all my brothers and sisters in West Bengal. I assure you that the Assembly elections in the state scheduled later this year will be fair and violence-free. The voters will be able to cast their votes without any kind of fear and pressure,” Kumar told media persons before leaving for Belur Math in Howrah, which is the international headquarters of the Swami Vivekananda-founded Ramakrishna Math & Ramakrishna Mission.

After visiting Belur Math, the CEC, along with other members of the ECI’s full Bench, is scheduled to hold a crucial meeting with top bureaucrats and senior police officers of the state government, including Chief Secretary Nandini Chakraborty and the state’s acting Director General of Police Peeyush Pandey. The meeting is scheduled to start around 10 A.M.

This will be followed by a press conference to be addressed by the CEC. The Commission’s full Bench will return to Delhi later in the day today.

Tuesday is also set to be an eventful day for West Bengal because of a crucial hearing later in the day at the Supreme Court on the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state, which is currently at the stage of judicial adjudication of the voters’ documents identified under the “logical discrepancy” category in the course of the revision exercise.

The expected time of hearing at a three-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, and Justice Nilay Vipinchandra Anjaria is expected to start at 3 P.M.

Currently, the judicial adjudication process is being carried out by 732 judicial officers, which include 100 each from neighbouring Jharkhand and Odisha.

Going by the daily rate of the process, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, had estimated that the entire process is unlikely to be completed before the first week of April.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, had announced that her indefinite sit-in protest at Esplanade East in central Kolkata against the SIR exercise will continue on Tuesday. However, her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, also the Trinamool Congress general secretary and the party’s Lok Sabha member, had requested the Chief Minister to withdraw the sit-in protest, considering her age and physical condition.

–IANS

src/rad