Narayanan discusses panchayat poll with state officials

A day after the State Election Commission issued notification for the first of the 3-phase panchayat poll in West Bengal, state Governor M K Narayanan today held a high-level meeting with top government officials at Raj Bhavan, presumably to discuss poll preparedness.
State chief secretary Sanjay Mitra, home secretary Basudev Banerjee and ADG (law and order) Banibrata Basu were, among others, present at the meeting which lasted over an hour, Raj Bhavan sources said.
Though none of the officials was available for comment, the Governor is understood to have discussed panchayat poll preparedness on the part of the administration.
State Election Commissioner Mira Pandey has already met the Governor in the last few days to brief him of the details of election preparedness on part of the poll panel as well as the problems centering force deployment in sensitive areas.

The commission had yesterday issued the poll notification for the first phase after waiting for 12 days for the state government to furnish details of the adequate force deployment to it.
Mira Pandey said yesterday that the SEC had not received any information regarding security force.
''We expect that the state government will let us know by tomorrow at least'', she said yesterday, adding that all officials, who would be involved in the poll process, came under the state election commission with the issue of poll notification.