Image for illustration purposes only. | Photo credit: File
Votekormi and BLO Aikya Mancha (Cabinet Level Electoral Staff and United Forum), West Bengal State Committee, on Saturday (November 22) demanded that their colleagues who died in the line of duty during the ongoing special intensive revision of the electoral roll should be given higher compensation.
Filing a deputation on behalf of BLOs from West Bengal, the association’s general secretary, Swapan Mandal, said the state government’s compensation of ₹2,000 for deceased BLOs in service was “disrespectful and inadequate”.
“Many government employees earn more than this. The state government must provide higher compensation to take care of the family of the deceased,” Mandal added.
At least three BLOs in West Bengal died during the process of door-to-door distribution and collection of forms. Two of them died by suicide and one died under unnatural circumstances.
After the third death on Saturday, the Trinamool Congress leadership took a hard look at the SIR process. “How many more must die for this SIR?” asked Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. According to a suicide note shared by Ms. Banerjee on her social media, the late BLO, Rinku Tarafdar, blamed the Election Commission of India (ECI) for the unbearable work pressure.
Following Ms Tarafdar’s death, the BLO on Saturday filed a deputation to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, raising several concerns. One of the concerns was about alleged pressure from Election Registration Officers (ERO) to complete the work on time. Another concern was the absence of editing facility in the BLO application, which makes it difficult to digitize the SIR forms as the upload process alone takes 10 minutes as the web server remains slow.
“Each BLO fills so many data forms every day, most of us work under extreme stress. Some human error is bound to happen. We need to be able to edit the data. Why was the editing option suddenly removed? We demand that it be brought back,” said Mr. Mandal.
About 41.20% of the enumeration forms have been digitized so far, according to data shared by the Director General of the WB office on Saturday.
On several occasions in the last one month, BLOs across the state have reported extreme work pressure. They also requested an extension of the deadline for the digitization of the enumeration forms, which is to be completed by December 4. Earlier, they also staged protests outside the CEO’s office to protest the “unmanageable workload”.
Published – 22 Nov 2025 20:02 IST
