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New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has launched a scathing attack on the newly elected BJP government in West Bengal over the appointment of former chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal as the state’s new chief secretary, pointing to a nexus between the saffron party and the Election Commission (EC).<\/p>\n
According to Kashmir Media Service, reacting to the appointment, Rahul Gandhi wrote on X: \u201cIn BJP-EC\u2019s \u2018chor bazaar (Thieves\u2019 Market)\u2019 \u2014 the bigger the theft, the bigger the reward.\u201d<\/p>\n
The remarks came amid growing criticism from opposition parties over the BJP government\u2019s decision to appoint Manoj Kumar Agarwal \u2014 who supervised the recently concluded West Bengal assembly elections \u2014 as the state\u2019s top bureaucrat within days of the saffron party coming to power.<\/p>\n
Agarwal was serving as the state\u2019s chief electoral officer during the high-voltage 2026 assembly elections in which the BJP secured a landslide victory.<\/p>\n
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) also strongly objected to the appointment, saying it reinforced suspicions about the neutrality of election authorities during the polls. TMC MP Sagarika Ghose said that the BJP government was rewarding a so-called \u201cneutral umpire\u201d after the party\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe so called \u2018neutral umpire\u2019 is rewarded with the post of top bureaucrat of the in Bengal. Does anyone still SERIOUSLY believe #BengalElections2026 were free and fair? Outrageous and brazen,\u201d Ghose posted on X.<\/p>\n
The appointment order was issued on Monday by the West Bengal government headed by chief minister Suvendu Adhikari.<\/p>\n
Opposition parties have particularly raised concerns over Agarwal\u2019s role in overseeing the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls before the elections. During the exercise, nearly 9.1 million names were deleted from voter lists across the state, including 2.71 million under a controversial \u201clogical discrepancy\u201d category.<\/p>\n
The TMC and other opposition parties have said that the revision process disproportionately affected voters believed to support anti-BJP parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has launched a scathing attack on the newly elected BJP government in West Bengal over the appointment of former chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal as the state’s new chief secretary, pointing to a nexus between the saffron party and the Election Commission (EC). According to Kashmir Media Service, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":200361,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/assests\/2026\/05\/rahul-gandhi-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200362,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200360\/revisions\/200362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}