In times of stress, some BLOs beat deadline, return to school duty
Times of India | 26 November 2025
Kolkata: Despite the stress, several BLOs have completed 100% digitisation of SIR enumeration forms. In Kolkata, Soma Roy Mandal, a 40-year-old booth level officer in Maniktala, was the first BLO to complete her work in 16 days since the Nov 4 rollout of SIR. She returned to her school on Tuesday. Across districts, 120 BLOs have already completed the distribution, collection, and digital submission of enumeration forms as per EC data released on Monday. This number has now increased.
Soma, speaking to TOI at her residence near Bidhannagar railway station, said, "I marked voters of different families with different coloured pens and separated their forms accordingly for seamless distribution among voters. I purchased four to five files of different colours for the systematic segregation of forms. For example, forms whose past links were missing were kept in one file, while forms with direct links were kept in another file. Forms of voters who shifted to other areas were kept in one file, while those with problems in forms were kept in another file. This helped me during the upload process."
While Soma was working on her BLO duties, her husband, Bikramaditya Roy Mandal, was working as the assistant ERO in Hasnabad. "I was a bit nervous, but as time passed by, things became clear. People in my area helped me by submitting forms on time," she said. The first part of the process, which was distribution, was delayed, but she took five to six days to collect forms on time. There are 530 voters where she was assigned duty, and of them, she assisted over 500 to fill forms and paste photos. "I used to leave around 10 am and work till 10-10.30 pm. I followed this routine while collecting forms. It took four days for me to upload forms at night. One day, I stayed awake till 4 am," she added.
Subhadeep Ghosh, a BLO from Maheshtala who completed distribution, collection, and digital submission of forms by Sunday evening, said he slept barely four hours a day over the past week while balancing his BLO and a schoolteacher jobs. "I had 92 test copies to check, and I completed it while fulfilling my BLO duties. I would leave home at 9 am and return by 6.30 pm. After a short rest, I would begin checking answer sheets. The submission process on the server became very fast after midnight," said Ghosh, who teaches at Batanagar Sri Krishna Ashram. Ghosh said there are 799 voters in his allotted part 225 under the Maheshtala assembly constituency.
Another BLO, Suman Naskar of Amdanga in North 24 Parganas, completed the process in 17 days. Naskar, in charge of booth 38, said: "There are 850 voters in my booth. Seven are deceased and six are missing. I completed form fill-up, data entry, and digitisation for the rest of 837 voters."
In Birbhum's Labhpur Assembly constituency, BLO Puja Ghosh also completed her assignment by Sunday. She covered 1,017 voters and set herself a target of uploading 150 forms a day.