I struggled to fill SIR forms. BLOs have it much worse

The Election Commission’s revision of voter lists in 12 states and Union Territories has been marred by suspected suicides of booth-level officers, or BLOs, since the exercise began on November 4.

There have been at least two cases reported from West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh and one each from Rajasthan, Gujarat and Kerala. There are also news reports of BLOs dying due to SIR-related stress and work pressure.

What is it about this current round of special intensive revision that has put so much pressure on booth-level officers?

BLOs are part-time employees of the Election Commission. They do this work in addition to their roles as school teachers, post-office employees, anganwadi workers or local revenue officials. Till August, they were paid Rs 500 a month for their election duties. After that, it was hiked to Rs 1,000.

These BLOs are accountable to Electoral Registration Officers, who are usually sub-divisional magistrates. According to The Indian Express, during the entire span of the Bihar special intensive revision, 39 BLOs were suspended and 42 had first information reports filed against them. In just one week in Uttar Pradesh, 60 FIRs have been filed against BLOs in Noida alone.

Imagine a day in the life of a BLO who is a school teacher in Uttar Pradesh. School begins at 9 am in the winter and ends at 3 pm. When clubbed with pre-work preparation and the commute, this alone takes about eight hours of the day.

Then comes the special intensive revision work. A polling station in Uttar Pradesh has 953 electors on average. The BLO has to distribute enumeration forms to all these electors and guide them on how to fill them. She has to make inquiries about electors who are enrolled in the village but have migrated for work, since they too need to submit the forms.

The special intensive revision now underway puts more work on the BLO than the Bihar exercise did. Its order says that BLOs need to mention probable cause for electors they cannot find. After inquiries with neighbours, they need to be labelled as “absent”, “shifted”, “dead” or “duplicate”.

Most crucially, BLOs in Bihar were not bound to search for the names of electors in the 2003 electoral roll. In some pockets of the state, they were simply collecting filled forms with Aadhaar details – even before the Supreme Court ordered Aadhaar to be included as one of the documents to prove one’s identity. I observed this first-hand while reporting in Purnia district.

BLOs outside Bihar do not have this luxury. For the ongoing revision, the Election Commission has categorically laid down that “no document is to be collected from electors during the enumeration phase”.

Instead, this revision has a more detailed enumeration form that demands excruciating detail. In addition to information about themselves, their parents and spouse, electors have to put down the serial number, booth number and the Assembly constituency number as it was in 2003 for themselves and their relatives.

“Hardly anyone in our village has bothered to fill in these details,” Pawan Kumar Tripathi, a BLO in Raini village in Uttar Pradesh’s Mau Assembly constituency, told me. “They are busy working in the fields. Many are occupied with wedding duties because this is the wedding season. Instead, we have to find the 2003 precedents of each elector ourselves and fill them in.”

Last week, I found out how difficult this could be when I decided to fill all the special intensive revision forms in my family. The hardest part is figuring out the polling station my parents were registered in 22 years ago.

The Election Commission adds and modifies polling stations every year, which means your local booth had a different number than 2003.

What complicates this further is that polling stations split and merge over time. So while my locality might have its own booth now, two decades ago, it shared one booth with two other colonies.

To get around this, I had to download the voter lists of several booths around my area. Only after a couple of hours of painstaking work could I find my parents’ names in the roll.

Unlike me, a BLO in Uttar Pradesh has to do this for 953 people. It must be done before December 4, while struggling with patchy internet, that too while juggling it with her school duties, commute, family chores and, if she is lucky, some much-needed rest.

Here is a summary of last week’s top stories.

The contentious labour codes. Kerala’s Labour Minister V Sivankutty said the state will not implement the Union government’s new labour codes. He said that the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment had convened a meeting of all states in October, during which Kerala reiterated its position against adopting the codes.

The Union government on November 21 notified the implementation of four labour codes, which replace 29 labour laws.

The Centre claims the new codes are aimed at extending coverage of statutory protection to platform workers. This includes need-based minimum wages, non-hazardous working conditions and universal social security entitlements.

However, critics have argued that the codes fail to extend social protection to the vast majority of informal sector workers.

Polygamy ban. The Assam Assembly passed a bill to ban polygamy. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma contended that the new law is not against Islam, and said that several Muslim-majority countries have also prohibited the practice.

However, Opposition leaders argued that the draft law violated constitutional provisions pertaining to the freedom of religion and the freedom to manage religious affairs.

The 2025 Assam Prohibition of Polygamy Bill had been introduced on Tuesday. It proposes up to seven years of imprisonment for persons convicted of polygamy. Those found guilty of having concealed their previous marriage can face punishment of up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

Sarma also said that if he returns as chief minister, he will introduce a Uniform Civil Code in the first Assembly session.

The Ram temple. Prime Minister Narendra Modi hoisted a saffron flag atop the Ram temple in Ayodhya, marking the completion of its construction. He claimed that the event marked “centuries-old injuries” being healed, and “centuries of torture” finding respite.

However, the Congress’ Rashid Alvi said that India has no religion as per the Constitution, and questioned whether Modi would similarly hoist a flag atop a mosque, gurdwara or church.

The Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was demolished on December 6, 1992, by Hindutva extremists because they believed that it stood on the spot on which the deity Ram had been born. The Ram temple that now stands at the site was built in line with a Supreme Court verdict from 2019.

Also on Scroll last week

• How Tata Group became BJP’s biggest donor weeks after Modi Cabinet cleared its semiconductor units
• As Ladki Bahin squeezes Maharashtra welfare schemes, will discontent surface in civic body polls?
• Why the police claim that a protest against Delhi pollution had ‘Naxal’ links
• Adani-led firm charged Rajasthan PSU over Rs 1,400 crore it wasn’t entitled to: Jaipur court
• What the air-pollution advisory from India’s health ministry hides
• Bangladesh: The death sentence for Hasina makes India’s hand stronger
• Harsh Mander: The incomplete dream of constitutional socialism in free India
• The rugged and tender charms of movie legend Dharmendra (1935-2025)
• ‘Gustaakh Ishq’ review: The real romance is between words rather than humans
• ‘Perfect Family’ review: Many home truths in a show about a dysfunctional clan

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