Kolkata, Nov 16 (PTI) A Booth Level Officer (BLO) fell ill on Sunday during the work of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), and his family claimed he was under serious stress to meet the deadline of submitting and uploading enumeration forms.
The BLO, Animesh Nandi, was admitted to a private hospital and his condition is currently stable, his wife said.
Nandi, a schoolteacher by profession, took ill while attending a meeting with the supervisor in north Kolkata’s Beleghata area.
The incident triggered a war of words over the workload of the BLOs.
While a spokesperson of an organisation of the BLOs said they were saddled with work like digitisation of forms and uploading of data, though initially they were asked only to distribute forms, explain the procedure to the voters, collect the documents and submit them by December 4.
“The intense pressure, which is in addition to their school duties, is taking its toll. We demand immediate recruitment of data entry operators,” BLO Unity Manch spokesperson Swapan Mondal said.
The incident triggered a political row as veteran TMC MP Saugata Roy alleged that the EC is undertaking the SIR exercise through force, and many BLOs are facing inconvenience.
“The EC’s promise to provide assistants to BLOs is not visible in many cases,” he said.
Earlier, the TMC linked several deaths including suicides in the state to the ongoing SIR, claiming that people are afraid of losing voting rights.
BJP Chief Whip Sankar Ghosh claimed that West Bengal’s ruling party is giving a political spin to each and every incident.
“The TMC supremo who sits on the court order on the DA hike of state government employees, is shedding crocodile tears for the BLOs. If they are overworked, that is due to the inefficiency of the state to recruit more data entry operators to lessen the workload of BLOs,” he said.
The TMC wants to jeopardise SIR, Ghosh alleged.
CPI(M) central committee member Sujan Chakraborty claimed, “The EC is not fully prepared to undertake a foolproof exercise; they are issuing new circulars every single day.” | An EC official said the commission was looking into the media reports in this regard and no official complaint has been lodged.
“We have taken every step to help BLOs carry out the exercise and the entire process is going on smoothly with their cooperation since November 4,” the official added. PTI SUS NN
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