BLO association seeks higher compensation for deceased colleagues

The Votekormi and BLO Aikya Mancha (Election staff and Booth Level Officer United Forum), West Bengal State Committee, on Saturday (November 22), demanded that their colleagues who died while performing duties of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of the voter roll be given higher compensation.

While filing a deputation on behalf of the BLOs of West Bengal, the association’s general secretary, Swapan Mandal, said that the State government’s ₹2 lakh compensation for the on-duty deceased BLOs is “disrespectful and inadequate.”

“Many government employees earn more than this. The State government must give higher compensation so the family of the deceased can be cared for,” Mr. Mandal added.

At least three BLOs in West Bengal have died during the door-to-door enumeration form distribution and collection process. Two of them died by suicide, and one died under unnatural circumstances.

After the third death on Saturday, the Trinamool Congress leadership came down heavily on the SIR process. “How many more need to die for this SIR?” Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asked. According to a suicide note shared by Ms. Banerjee on her social media, the deceased BLO, Rinku Tarafdar, blamed the Election Commission of India (ECI) for the unbearable work pressure.

After Ms. Tarafdar’s death, the BLO Association on Saturday filed a deputation with the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, and raised multiple concerns. One of the concerns was about alleged pressure from Electoral Registration Officers (ERO) to finish work before time. The other concern was over the lack of an edit option on the BLO app, which is making the digitisation of the SIR forms harder, when the uploading process itself is taking 10 minutes as the website server remains slow.

“Each BLO is filing so many data forms every single day, most of us are working under extreme stress. Some human errors are bound to happen. We need to be able to edit the data. Why was the edit option suddenly removed? We demand that it be brought back,” Mr. Mandal said.

As per data shared by the CEO, WB office on Saturday, around 41.20% of the enumeration forms have been digitised till now.

On multiple occasions in the past month, BLOs across the State have reported extreme work pressure. They had also asked for a deadline extension on digitisation of enumeration forms, which is supposed to be completed by December 4. They have also previously held protests outside the CEO office to protest against the “unmanageable workload”.