No discrimination, says EC

Despite CPI-M's strong reservations, the EC said it would bring some polling personnel from outside West Bengal for the May 10 Lok Sabha polls to improve voter confidence.

Despite CPI-M's strong reservations, the Election Commission on Saturday said it would bring some polling personnel from outside West Bengal for the May 10 Lok Sabha polls to improve voter confidence, while denying that the EC was discriminating against the state.

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''Of a total two lakh, only 2,000 polling personnel will be brought from outside which constitutes only one per cent. There is no cause to get agitated over it,'' Chief Election Commissioner TS Krishnamurthy told a press conference here.

Krishnamurthy said it was not for the first time that the EC was doing this in West Bengal. It had also been done in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir.

''EC has decided to bring a few polling personnel from outside to improve voter confidence and it has no reflection on local polling officers. Many central government employees will be deployed, preferably Bengali-speaking,'' he said.

The polling personnel, to be brought from outside the state, would be posted depending on strategic condition. But the message it would convey was that polling personnel were totally neutral, the CEC said.

During a meeting earlier in the day, CPI-M leader Rabin Deb urged the CEC to reconsider the decision to bring polling personnel from outside as it had given a clean chit to West Bengal on peaceful conduct of polls on earlier occasions.