The Election Commission began a Special Intensive Revision of voter lists in 12 states earlier this month — with forms distributed to several crore people across the country. The electoral roll cleanup exercise has been met with strong backlash from the ruling parties in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Some political parties have also announced state-wise protests against the updation process. Booth-level officers have also been left fuming over “unmanageable” work pressure and a barrage of form-filling errors.
According to a report by The Hindu, some BLOs in West Bengal have now sought an extension of the enumeration phase. They also flagged “tremendous work pressure” since the beginning of November and called for assistance with online data entry. Some officials also led protests in Siliguri and Howrah against the growing workload on Saturday. A report by The Telegraph indicated that the issue was two-fold with many voters making mistakes while filling out the forms while others had not even started over fear that they would make errors.
Matching of data with the previous 2002 SIR list has also compounded the problem, with many keeping their forms incomplete. BLOs also found themselves contending with data in multiple languages, no clear ECI plan for pre-mapped data, and missing photographs and other information.
BLOs struggle with new responsibilities
The Election commission had appointed booth-level officers for each polling station — mostly from among existing government employees such as teachers. They are expected to distribute the enumeration forms, collect them once filled by voters and then digitise the data using the BLO app. Some officials have reportedly raised questions about how they could be expected to carry out SIR duties alongside regular workplace responsibilities. Many have also been left stumbling over the digitisation process since they are unfamiliar with data entry skills.
“We are working several hours a day in our usual jobs, and afterwards to complete distributing and collecting enumeration forms as soon as possible. Uploading data is another time and labour-intensive task. Our simple demand to the ECI is to engage data entry operators for this purpose,” one BLO told The Hindu.
A Times of India article adds that BLOs had reportedly walked out of a scheduled data entry training session in Siliguri — chanting slogans and lying on the ground to register their protest. Similar scenes were also seen during training sesions in Howrah. The Vote Kormi and BLO Aikya Mancha had eventually submitted a memorandum to the Bengal CEO on Saturday.
Opposition parties protest
The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam led by actor-turned-politician Vijay had called for a protest across Tamil Nadu on Sunday — voicing vehement objections to the SIR. The party had reportedly planned to hold demonstrations at all district headquarters. State-level office-bearers were expected to lead the protests in key districts while zonal and union-level office-bearers oversaw local mobilisation and ensured maximum participation.