SIR timeline has thrown system into chaos: TMC on BLO death
The Statesman | 23 November 2025
Unable to bear the enormous stress of the job, a Block Level Officer in Nadia committed suicide holding the Election Commission responsible for her death.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee condoled the death.
Rinku Tarafdar from Krishnagar committed suicide by hanging herself. So far, three BLOs have committed suicide and 31 people in the state died unable to bear the stress of Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
Arup Chakraborty, Trinamul Congress spokesperson said Gyanesh Kumar, Chief Election Commissioner should take the responsibility for the death. Trinamul Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee had said over and over again that she was not against SIR but more time should have been allotted to do the exercise. “The ECI should have engaged data entry operators. That they did not, and instead forced the BLOs to do the job,” he said. Chakraborty, himself a software engineer, said, “Having no knowledge to handle computers is not a crime and it is not the job of the BLOs. The ECI did not give any training on how to upload data to the BLOs,” he said.
He said the BJP leaders, who always talk big, should go and meet the members of Tafardar’s family. “The people of Bengal will teach a lesson in 2026 Assembly election just the way they taught a lesson to the BJP in 2021 Assembly polls.”
Pratima Mondol, party’s MP demanded arrest of Shantanu Thakur, Union minister of state for shipping, after BJP workers were seen selling forms from his office to the Matuas after giving assurance that this will help them to fetch citizenship. “Can a central minister do this? He should be arrested immediately,” she said.
The TMC leaders said that it took two years to complete the same process earlier, yet this time the BJP wants it finished in barely two months. This impossible timeline has thrown the entire system into chaos. Ordinary people are running from booth to booth with enumeration forms and no one is able to guide them. BLOs themselves have not received proper training, so how will they give clarity to citizens? People are being punished for the incompetence of an ECI that is behaving like a political wing of the BJP.
At the Press Conference, the TMC leaders said that another serious violation is the use of the outdated 2002 voter roll as the base for SIR, even though West Bengal underwent delimitation in 2009. They pointed out that rules say once delimitation is carried out, earlier rolls must be discarded and the revised one used as the base. By ignoring this, the ECI has made SIR legally questionable and administratively unsound.
Pointing out at the cases where names are being deleted mysteriously, TMC leaders gave examples. “In Khapaidanga alone, 581 names have vanished. In Cooch Behar Uttar’s Booth 303 and multiple booths in Mathabhanga, hundreds of longtime voters have been wiped out. In Natabari’s Booth No. 2, the list has collapsed from 717 names to just 140, and in Booth No. 160, entries from 417 to 841 are gone. In Ashoknagar, one booth shows zero voters, and in another, entire sections have vanished. In Alipurduar’s Majher Dabri, even the BLO’s own father, mother and brother are missing. This is not clerical error, it is a targeted purge to steal voting rights,” said the leaders.