The Congress on Tuesday intensified its attack on the BJP and the Election Commission of India, alleging a “blatant nexus” between the ruling party and the poll body over the appointment of two senior bureaucrats to key positions in West Bengal following the 2026 Assembly elections.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh claimed that former West Bengal Chief Election Officer Manoj Agarwal and senior IAS officer Subrata Gupta had been “rewarded” with influential posts after allegedly facilitating electoral advantages for the BJP through controversial voter roll revisions and deletions.
In a post on social media platform X, Ramesh alleged that Manoj Agarwal, a 1990-batch IAS officer who supervised the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections as the state’s Chief Election Officer, had now been appointed Chief Secretary to the West Bengal government.
He further claimed that Subrata Gupta, also a 1990-batch IAS officer who served as Special Roll Observer during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, had been appointed Chief Adviser to West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari.
“These appointments reflect the brazen collusion and connivance between the ECI and BJP. There is no longer even an attempt to keep the collusion discrete or concealed,” Ramesh said.
Escalating the Opposition’s criticism, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi also targeted the BJP and the Election Commission in a separate post on X, saying, “In the BJP-EC’s ‘market of thieves,’ the bigger the theft, the bigger the reward.”
The Congress leader further alleged that the Election Commission functioned in a partisan manner during the Assembly polls and claimed that nearly 27 lakh voters had been disenfranchised through the revision exercise. According to Ramesh, the electoral roll scrutiny was “tactfully executed by the ECI to create an electoral advantage for BJP.”
The remarks come amid sustained Opposition criticism of the Election Commission over voter list revisions and alleged electoral irregularities in multiple states. The Congress and several Opposition parties have repeatedly accused the poll body of acting in a manner favourable to the BJP, charges that the Election Commission has consistently denied.