The new BJP government that seeks to make a departure from this past can ill afford to be unmindful of this. 3 min read May 14, 2026 06:00 AM IST First published on: May 14, 2026 at 06:00 AM IST The appointment of West Bengal’s Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal as the Chief Secretary by the Suvendu Adhikari government raises many a question. Agarwal, who is the state’s senior-most bureaucrat, but is set to retire in July, supervised the rollout of the Special Intensive Revision exercise in the state, which led to about 91 lakh deletions. Of these, nearly 27 lakh are seen as controversial, for which the appellate process is incomplete. The West Bengal SIR is also under challenge in the Supreme Court. Against this backdrop, the government’s decision to appoint Agarwal is questionable not because of his own competence, but because it risks undermining trust in a premise larger than him — that those overseeing election processes are not keeping an eye on a post-election office.…