Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is believed to have asked district magistrates and police officials attending a high-level meeting at Nabanna today to remain vigilant against any alleged attempts to manipulate Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the upcoming elections, sources said.
The meeting, convened primarily to address the crisis in LPG supply, finalised standard operating procedures (SOPs) to tackle the scarcity of domestic and commercial gas, sources added.
An official release from Nabanna stated that the SOPs were designed to ensure coordinated monitoring, stabilise supplies, and provide immediate redressal of public grievances. It emphasised the need to maintain uninterrupted services such as cooked mid-day meals, ICDS provisions, hospital diets, and essential domestic consumption.
The communiqué further announced that a 24×7 control room would be operational at Nabanna to serve as the central hub for coordination and monitoring. The control room will track LPG availability, stock positions, and movement across the state, while liaising with districts, distributors, and oil marketing companies (OMCs) to resolve bottlenecks. OMCs may also depute nodal officers to facilitate real-time information sharing.
The control room numbers are: Landline ~ 1070 / 033-2214-3526; Mobile ~ 8697981070.
The meeting also constituted a panel for LPG crisis monitoring, to be headed by Chief Secretary Nandini Chakraborty. The panel will regularly review the supply situation and provide policy guidance to stabilise LPG availability across sectors.
Her apprehension about EVM manipulations reportedly stems from the incident at Nandigram in the 2021 Assembly polls, where she was first declared the winner and later, her opponent BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari was declared the winner, said officials at the state secretariat.