Much of the problem has risen because of the inexplicable haste with which the Election Commission has sought to carry out the SIR exercise

The Election Commission of India (ECI) appears incapable of disentangling itself from the mounting controversy over its Special Revision Exercise (SIR) of electoral rolls across the country. After being accused by the Opposition of deleting and adding voters by ramming through the SIR on the eve of the recent Bihar polls, enabling the ruling BJP and its allies to score a landslide victory, a new battlefront has opened. Now embarked on a SIR of electoral rolls in 12 states and Union Territories, it is confronted with a virtual revolt by Booth Level Officers (BLOs), government employees drafted for the revision exercise, who are complaining that they are being asked to do too much in too little time.

The exercise, which involves laborious door-to-door verification, data collection, and digitisation of voter records, often disrupted by faulty wireless networks, has been compressed into an impossibly tight schedule. BLO employee unions, backed by local political leaders, are complaining that a process that traditionally spans years has been forced into a two-month window, creating impractical targets. This unprecedented work pressure on a variety of government employees, who are forced to do extra election duties along with their regular work and are often harassed by their supervisors with impossible deadlines, has led to a series of deaths of BLOs across the 12 states and union territories in the throes of Special Intensive Revision over the past month. 

There is growing furore linking an inept electoral administrative machinery ordered to do this hasty drastic exercise to several fatalities, involving suicides and critical mental distress among BLOs. While estimates vary of the actual number of BLO deaths linked directly or indirectly to pressure from their election labours, at least one independent report documented 16 BLO deaths in just 19 days of November across six states, attributed to overwork, stress, heart attacks, and suicides. These include four each in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, three in West Bengal, two in Rajasthan, and one each in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Not surprisingly, opposition parties have been quick to amplify the internal turmoil caused by the SIR to push the government on the back foot. Congress leader Supriya Shrinate has alleged that as many as 26 BLOs have been “murdered in daylight” by the election revision exercise. In West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee has held public rallies blaming the Election Commission for 36 deaths in the state alone of BLOs as well as other citizens, fearing that the hasty and haphazard amendment of electoral rolls would arbitrarily disenfranchise them.

As a matter of fact, the new commotion about the SIR has given fresh fuel to the campaign by the firebrand Trinamool Congress supremo to rally people of her state against the BJP on the eve of assembly polls early next year. She wrote a strongly-worded letter to the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyaneshwar Prakash, earlier this week expressing concerns over the poll panel’s decision to appoint private data entry operators and set up polling stations in private housing complexes. The Chief Minister alleged that this departure from the previous practice of using the band of trained government operators and secure government and semi-government premises raised suspicions of partisan behaviour by the election authorities to favour a particular party.

While in Opposition-ruled states like West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, all of them due for assembly polls early next year, state governments have been openly backing the stir by BLOs protesting against the extra workload imposed on them by the revision of electoral rolls, there has been considerable trouble even in the BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat. 

Three BLOs in Uttar Pradesh have died this week alone amid allegations from their families that work pressure linked to the ongoing voter roll revision contributed to the deaths. An even more controversial death was reported from the Gonda district, where assistant teacher and BLO Vipin Yadav died after consuming poison on Tuesday. A video recorded by his wife showed him claiming he faced harassment and pressure from supervisory officers involved in the revision exercise. His family alleged he had been instructed to delete names of voters from his own OBC community. While the authorities have denied all these allegations, the Noida administration has registered FIRs against over 60 BLOs and seven supervisors across three police stations for alleged negligence and disobedience during the ongoing exercise. In Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich, two BLOs have been suspended for misconduct.

Government schoolteachers have been protesting across Rajasthan against overwhelming SIR duties that they said were detracting them from their tutorial responsibilities. The protests followed the death of Mukesh Jangid, a 36-year-old BLO, who allegedly took his own life due to unrealistic revision targets and threats of suspension from his job. Similar allegations have surfaced in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, where several BLOs have died, either by taking their lives or out of stress-related health issues, creating a major embarrassment for the local authorities and the state governments.

The ensuing chaos around the SIR exercise is both unfortunate and needless. It has little to do with the stated goals of the project, which are to update the electoral rolls which have been affected by frequent migration, dead voters, and other inaccuracies. Much of the problem has risen because of the unseemly and inexplicable haste with which the Election Commission has sought to carry out an exercise which surely should have been organised keeping the limited trained manpower resources, faulty electronic equipment, and communication networks in mind. It will be sad indeed that a dysfunctional election administrative machinery and top leadership added to the Opposition chorus of deliberately rigged polls leads to India’s only genuine claim to being the world’s largest democracy—free and fair elections—to be trampled underfoot.