Day after protests, EC officials reassure BLOs but fear remains
Times of India | 3 November 2025
Kolkata: In a bid to soothe frayed nerves, the Election Commission officials have started reaching out to booth level officers (BLOs), allowing them to choose their own time slots for their field verification visits from Nov 4 for a month.
The intimation reaching the BLOs, however, does not offer them a choice on where they will be assigned the field visits, the booth where they stay, the booth where they work, or booths which are neither of the two. BLOs, mostly school teachers, are still apprehensive about the disruption to their normal workdays.
During their interaction with EC officials on Saturday, BLOs got agitated and asked why they were being marked absent for days they were unable to attend school or their official duties for SIR-related work.
The BLOs are also agitated that their dual workload — both in their offices and during the field visits — will make it impossible for them to do either properly unless the EC clarifies that the month-long SIR-related work will not result in absenteeism at their workplace.
The EC said they were awaiting clarity from Delhi.
An EC official said, "We saw there is a tendency to spread tension among BLOs, but they need not worry as the ECI has given maximum relaxation to them.
They can work in any shift as per their choice and the availability of voters. They can easily handle both duties." He also highlighted that in 2002, during the previous SIR process, the task was quite difficult, but now the workload has reduced and everything is computerized.
The EC argued that a booth has 1,200 voters, which is around 300 to 400 families. "If the BLOs visit 8-10 families a day, they can complete the work in a month," an EC official said.
But, school heads and a section of BLOs are in a fix, as several of them highlighted that handling both tasks is difficult even though the duty area is adjacent to their schools. A teacher in central Kolkata who was given duty said, "How long can we retain our patience maintaining school and home visits side by side." TOI recently reported that there are several schools in Kolkata, North and South 24 Parganas where most of the teachers got duties, leading to fears over how schools will run with skeleton staff structure.
Headmaster of a city school said, "It's not possible for the teachers to perform door-to-door duties and at the same time attend classes. This is the time when lined-up examinations start where teachers set questions, invigilate and check answer sheets." Sources said considering several points raised by teachers, the commission might allow some more relaxation in their duties. But the education department stated that they couldn't intervene since this was ECI's duty.
Education minister Bratya Basu on Saturday stated, "If they want to use teachers as BLOs, then they should have made proper communication with the education dept, which was not done." Animesh Haldar, convenor of teachers and staffers BLO duty resistance platform, said, "We have consistently stated that selectively assigning BLO duties to teachers is unacceptable. This will further harm the state's education system.
We also demanded that the safety of those forced to perform BLO duties be ensured."