The West Bengal government has recommended a panel of three Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers to the Election Commission of India (ECI) for the selection of a new Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) for the state. The former CEO, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, now serves as the Chief Secretary of West Bengal. Subrata Gupta, the previous ECI-appointed special poll observer, has been appointed as the chief advisor to the new Chief Minister, Suvendu Adhikari.
Neelam Meena, Tanmay Chakrabarty, and Moumita Godara Basu are the three IAS officers proposed by the state government for the CEO position. Meena, the most senior among them, belongs to the 1998 IAS batch, followed by Chakraborty from the 2006 batch and Basu from the 2007 batch. Manoj Kumar Agarwal, a 1990-batch IAS officer, assumed the role of CEO in March 2025 after serving as the Additional Chief Secretary in various departments under the previous government.
Following the announcement of Assembly election dates earlier this year, the ECI replaced the then Chief Secretary, Nandini Chakrabarty, with Dushyant Nariala. With the recent change in government, Nariala was reassigned as the Resident Commissioner in Delhi, and Agarwal took over as the new Chief Secretary. Nandini Chakraborty, now overseeing land handover to the Border Security Force (BSF) for border fencing with Bangladesh, serves as the principal coordinator for development works under the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO).
