No proposal to club voting rounds: Panel

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday said that it had received no proposal to merge the last two phases of the ongoing election in West Bengal.

ECI officials also refuted a report, published in HT on Wednesday, that observers in the state had told the poll watchdog that clubbing the two phases was possible if more security forces were granted.

The HT report, citing senior election officials, had said that poll observers — Ajay Nayak and Vivek Dube — wrote a letter to ECI late last week, saying that the seventh and eighth phases of the Bengal elections, scheduled on April 26 and 29, could be merged if extra security forces are provided.

The report cited a senior election official who said he had reviewed the letter. HT did not independently see the letter.

According to the official, the observers told ECI that the last two phases could be merged due to the surge in infections but such a step would need 500 additional companies of security force. “ECI has neither received a letter from observers, nor is ECI mulling over any proposal to club the phases,” said an ECI spokesperson.

Another EC official said that merging phases was problematic at this stage.

“Extra forces is just one part of it -- they are posted across the country, and sending them to Bengal needs advance notice and that would be ideally three to four months earlier,” said the second official on condition of anonymity. He also added that any changes would violate the candidates’ right under the Representation of the People’s Act 1951.

The debate over the final phases of the high-stakes election comes amid a spike in infections in Bengal.

The state logged 9,819 cases — its highest — and 46 cases on Tuesday, according to the HT dashboard.