TMC cries foul as Bengal's top poll official, who oversaw SIR, appointed chief secretary; BJP defends move

Kolkata: Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s government on Monday appointed Manoj Agarwal as the new chief secretary of the West Bengal government, although the bureaucrat, who oversaw the recent state assembly polls as the chief electoral officer, drew flak from the Trinamool Congress for being allegedly biased in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Agarwal, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service, was appointed as the new chief secretary just two days after Subrata Gupta, who oversaw the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral roll in West Bengal, was appointed as the advisor to the chief minister of the new BJP government in the state. Adhikari also picked up Surajit Ray to serve at his office. Ray was the Returning Officer in Bhabanipur, where Adhikari defeated Mamata Banerjee, the supremo of the Trinamool Congress and his predecessor at the helm of the government.

“The so-called ‘neutral umpire’ is rewarded with the post of top bureaucrat of the @BJP4India dispensation in Bengal. Does anyone still SERIOUSLY believe #bengalelections2026 were free and fair? Outrageous and brazen,” Sagarika Ghose, a TMC member in the Rajya Sabha, wrote on X, shortly after Agarwal was appointed as the new chief secretary of West Bengal.

The BJP, however, stated that Agarwal had been appointed in keeping with the saffron government’s promise to restore the dignity of the laws of the land. Unlike Mamata Banerjee, who had subverted the bureaucracy by blatantly flouting the rules governing the IAS by superseding dozens of officers, the BJP government of West Bengal appointed the senior-most IAS officer working in the state (Manoj Agarwal) as the chief secretary of the state, the saffron party’s West Bengal unit posted on X.

Agarwal and retired IAS officer, Gupta, who was appointed as the special roll observer by the Election Commission, oversaw the roll revision exercise, which resulted in the deletion of 91 lakh people from the list of voters just ahead of the assembly elections, including 27 lakhs for “logical discrepancies”.

Gupta had been appointed by the EC as the Special Roll Observer on November 30, 2025, to oversee the exercise of revision of the list of voters in West Bengal. He remained a special observer of the EC during the two-phase polling in the state.

The TMC, which has now been voted out of power, had alleged that the EC had embarked on the roll revision exercise in the poll-bound state only to ensure an electoral advantage for the BJP. Mamata’s party also alleged that genuine citizens of India had been harassed and stripped of voting rights in the name of the roll revision. The BJP, however, claimed that the roll revision was a necessary exercise to remove the dead and duplicate voters, as well as the illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar, from the electoral rolls of West Bengal. Adhikari, himself, had repeatedly stated during the roll revision exercise that it would make it difficult for the TMC to win because the illegal migrants, whom Mamata’s party had turned into its vote bank, would be struck off the lists of voting rights.

Adhikari also won from his home turf, Nandigram in Purba Medinipur, in the just-concluded elections, in addition to beating Mamata in her fiefdom in Bhabanipur.

After Agarwal visited Nandigram ahead of the April 23 polling, the TMC accused him of having a local BJP leader in his entourage.

Ray has been posted as the senior deputy secretary at the office of Adhikari. He was serving as an additional director at the Directorate of Land Revenue and Survey of the state government of West Bengal. He was appointed as the Returning Officer of Bhabanipur by the Election Commission during the assembly elections. The TMC repeatedly accused him of being known for his proximity to Adhikari as well as of being biased in favour of the BJP. He was also accused of trying to restrict Mamata’s campaigning in Bhabanipur.

The TMC repeatedly demanded before the April 29 polling in Bhabanipur that the EC must replace Ray with another unbiased Returning Officer. The EC asked the state government to submit a proposal naming three officers to replace Ray. But the poll panel finally decided to let Ray continue as the Returning Officer. Mamata and her TMC alleged that the BJP, with the help of Election Commission officers, manipulated and committed irregularities at the counting centre, leading to Adhikari's victory in Bhabanipur.