Why the removal of Muslim and OBC election officials ahead of bye-polls in UP has raised eyebrows

For close to two decades, Shakeel Ahmed, a nagar panchayat employee in Uttar Pradesh, has been pressed into service during elections.

The 51-year-old was tasked with adding and removing voters from the electoral roll as a booth-level officer in Katehari Assembly constituency in Ambedkar Nagar district.

Booth-level officers, who are usually local-level government employees, like anganwadi workers, panchayat secretaries or postmen, act as part-time officials of the Election Commission of India. Apart from maintaining voter lists, they also distribute voter information slips before polling day, which confirm the voter’s registration and includes information on where and when to cast their vote.

But in September, Ahmed was told by the sub-divisional magistrate that his services as a BLO at the polling centre in Iltifatganj Bazar were not required. “After the [Lok Sabha] elections, we were told that our work in the nagar panchayat was suffering because of the BLO duty,” said Ahmed. “But none of the Hindu BLOs in the neighbouring villages were removed.”

In Uttar Pradesh, the Lok Sabha elections held earlier this year were marred by allegations that voters from Muslim, Yadav and other communities – seen as supporters of the Samajwadi Party, the main opposition party in the state – were denied their vote in several constituencies. In Mathura, Muslim voters told Scroll that booth-level officers had deleted their names from voter lists.

Now, as the state holds bye-elections in nine Assembly constituencies in November, allegations of electoral rigging are back, but in another form.

In August and September, the Adityanath government removed hundreds of booth-level officers in these constituencies. Scroll’s analysis of two constituencies – Kundarki and Katehari – reveals that a striking number of booth-level officers removed from their duties belong to Muslim, Yadav and Kurmi communities.

The Samajwadi Party had flagged the “undemocratic and unconstitutional” removal of BLOs to the chief electoral officer in Uttar Pradesh, saying that it put a “question mark on fairness of the elections”.

The bye-polls are pegged as a litmus test for the leadership of chief minister Adityanath. The Bharatiya Janata Party lost 30 seats in the state in the Lok Sabha elections, thereby losing its majority in Parliament.

In the aftermath of the recent national polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party constituted a task force to investigate its poor show in Uttar Pradesh.

One of the reasons cited in by findings of the task force was “non-cooperation from state government officials”, reported The Print.

In Ambedkar Nagar, Rajesh Singh, the BJP district coordinator, told Scroll that even though BSP and SP are no longer in power in the state, some “government officials still do their bidding” and “work against the Adityanath government”. Most of these officials, Singh added, were Yadavs and Muslims.

Against this backdrop, the removal of the BLOs from these communities is being seen as the BJP government’s attempt to ensure the field is skewed in its favour.

Two constituencies: 200 BLOs changed

We compared the names of BLOs in Kundarki and Katehari published by their district administrations before the general elections with the names of BLOs now available on the Election Commission’s Voters’ Service Portal.

In Kundarki, BLOs were changed at 181 polling stations – a little over 40% of the 436 polling stations in the constituency. As many as 85 BLOs removed were Muslim.

Nineteen BLOs were removed in Katehari, which has 425 polling stations. Ten of them are Muslim, one is Yadav and eight are Kurmis. After the rejig, the Katehari Assembly is left without any Muslim BLO. The community constitutes nearly 17% of the population in Ambedkar Nagar district, according to the 2011 census.

“It is a politically motivated decision,” said Ahmed.

The Samajwadi Party’s complaint to the Electoral Commission also cited examples of transfers of Muslim BLOs in Sishamau assembly constituency in Kanpur Nagar district and Majhawan assembly constituency in Mirzapur district – both up for bye-polls next month.

Former chief election commissioner OP Rawat told Scroll that BLOs can be transferred by their administrative departments before the bye-elections are notified.

The UP bye-polls were notified on October 15.

“BLOs may be in position for more than three years if their administrative department does not transfer them,” he said. Rawat added that the administration cannot appoint or remove BLOs on the basis of faith or caste.

According to the ECI’s manual on electoral rolls, BLOs remain under control of their administrative departments, but “would not be transferred without prior permission of the District Election Officer”. The cases of their transfer are decided by the chief electoral officer.

The Election Commission had sought a detailed report from the chief electoral officer on the allegations. Rawat said that the ECI should make the findings public.

Scroll sent questions to the district election officers in Moradabad and Ambedkar Nagar, and to the chief election officer in Lucknow and the ECI in Delhi. This story will be updated if we receive a response.

The change in Katehari

On September 11, Lalji Verma, the Samajwadi Party MP from Ambedkar Nagar, took to Twitter to allege that Yadav, Kurmi and Muslim officials in the district administration were being removed to enable electoral manipulation in the coming bye-poll in Katehari.

The SP leader’s social coalition includes Muslims, Yadavs, and voters from his own caste, Kurmis, a landowning community classified as an ‘other backward class’ in UP.

Verma was elected MLA from Katehari from the Bahujan Samaj Party in 2017, and from the Samajwadi Party in 2022. His wife, Shobhawati Verma, is the candidate in the upcoming bypoll.

His winning margin in the Katehari seat has been slim – ranging from about 6,000 votes in 2017, 8,000 in 2022 to about 17,000 in 2024.

During the 2024 general election, the Samajwadi Party got more votes than the BJP in all the 19 polling stations in Katehari in which BLOs have been changed, shows official polling data published by the ECI. Its combined vote share in these booths was 65%, compared to BJP’s 18%.

On September 6, in a written order seen by Scroll, the Ambedkar Nagar district administration replaced 10 BLOs in Katehari because of “inevitable reasons”. Eight of them were Kurmis, one Yadav and one Muslim.

In the coming month, nine other BLOs – all Muslims – were either informed about their removal, or asked to resign from their positions, say the BLOs.

Kadir Husen, who works in the district’s MNREGS department, had been the BLO in Adhanpur village in Katehari since 2016. “My department was sent a notice by the tehsil that I was no longer a BLO,” said Husen. “They were told that my progress on updating the voter list was slow and so they were removing me.”

Manju Verma, a BLO in Maurapara village since 2012, was not given any reason for her removal. “I got the news from the lekhpal [ a revenue official] only after my name was removed from the list,” she said.

Shakeel Ahmad said that he, along with three other Muslim colleagues in the nagar panchayat, were summoned by sub-divisional magistrate Shashi Shekhar and asked to submit their resignation as BLOs.

But one of his colleagues, Mohammad Intkaf, a former BLO at the Iltifatganj polling centre, told Scroll that he had put in the resignation himself, and not under the bureaucrat’s pressure. “The work was too much,” he said. “I had been trying to get off that duty since last year.”

Most of the new BLOs in the 19 polling stations in Katehari are Dalits, while the remaining are from marginalised OBC groups like Badhai and Kahar. There are also two Brahmins and one Yadav woman.

One of them, a Dalit woman, was upset over her new part-time role. “I have never been a BLO,” she said, on the condition of anonymity. “The woman who was doing the job before me was very hardworking. Now, for a pay of Rs 500, they want me to work after my day job and update the voter list. This is exploitation.”

‘Attempt to bring down our vote share’

The Kundarki Assembly falls in Moradabad district, but is part of the Sambhal parliamentary constituency.

Kundarki has been a strong seat for the Samajwadi Party. It has won the seat in every state election since 2012 – and with good margins. In the 2022 Assembly elections, its winning margin was nearly 43,000 votes. In the recent general election, this swelled up to nearly 57,000, according to ECI data.

One of the reasons for this is the Muslim community, which significantly consolidated behind the SP and Congress alliance this year, and makes up nearly 47% of Moradabad district.

In August, the Moradabad administration changed BLOs at 181 polling stations in Kundarki assembly.

Of the BLOs removed, 85 are Muslims and 96 are Hindus. While a majority of Hindu BLOs – 90 out of 96 – were replaced by other Hindu BLOs, a majority of Muslim BLOs – 78 out of 85 – were also replaced by Hindu BLOs, Scroll’s analysis shows.

As a result, the number of Muslim BLOs in Kundarki has fallen from 128 to 56.

Mohammad Usman, a Samajwadi Party leader in Moradabad, told Scroll that the SP-Congress alliance has an estimated vote share of around 65% in Kundarki. “These [removal of Muslim BLOs] are efforts by the BJP to bring down our vote share by cutting out names of our voters from the voter lists, while increasing their vote share,” he said.

During the general election, the SP got more votes than the BJP in 119 of the 181 polling stations, with a total vote share of 54%. The BJP cornered more votes in 61 polling stations, with a total vote share of 32%. There was a draw at one polling station, shows booth-wise data released by the ECI.

Jarrar Ali, who had been a BLO in Jaitpur village till August, said that not just Muslims, but Yadav BLOs have also been removed from their positions. Scroll could identify five Yadav BLOs who were shown the door. One of them, Hariom Yadav, the former BLO in Bhaypur village, said that he was given the news over a phone call from the administration in August.

Ali added that the government had also removed dozens of ‘shiksha mitra’ from BLO positions. Shiksha mitras are teachers in government schools who are hired on a contractual basis.

Shiksha mitras in UP have been demanding regularisation of their positions for nearly a decade. They have also asked for a hike in their pay. In recent years, their cause has been taken up by the Samajwadi Party.

Suraj Pal, a Dalit who is a shiksha mitra in Jaitpur, said that he had been removed from BLO duty because “Yogi [Adityanath] thinks that we cut BJP votes at our booths and discourage others from voting for the party”.

Pal added: “I can’t even get my relatives to vote one way or the other, and they think we can influence a whole booth.”

Of the 181 BLOs removed in Kundarki, 91 are shiksha mitras. Fifty-one of them are Hindus, and 40 are Muslims.

Bagesh, a Thakur who is a shiksha mitra and a former BLO in Maanpur Patti village, said that in July, the additional district magistrate had summoned shiksha mitras and asked them to resign from their BLO duties. “Many of us refused, but we were removed anyway,” he said.

Devansh Mittal contributed to reporting.