In 27 days, claims of 41 SIR-linked deaths as panic, confusion shift from voters to BLOs
Times of India | 1 December 2025
Kolkata: Booth level officers (BLOs) and voters reacted with relief, anger, and renewed anxiety on Sunday after the Election Commission of India (ECI) extended the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls by a week — a move the poll panel said was administrative. Critics, however, were quick to point out that the extension came only after mounting public pressure over deaths and excessive workload associated with the exercise.
The ECI's revised timeline pushed the enumeration period to Dec 11, the draft roll publication to Dec 16, and set the publication of the final roll on Feb 14, 2026.
Families of several BLOs and political outfits, however, said that the extension came too late. Over the last month, Bengal saw multiple deaths — including BLOs — which relatives and local party functionaries attributed to the pressure of door-to-door enumeration, long hours, and weak administrative support.
In Behala, a BLO who is yet to complete her digitisation process said she was "grateful" for the extension. "The earlier deadline was impossible. We were working since morning and filling forms late into the night. This one week gives us at least some breathing space," said BLO Arpita Pal.
Several officers said the revised schedule would help clear pending verification and reduce the number of forced revisits. "People are often not home during the day. We had to return twice or thrice. That was the reason I started digitisation of forms only after all forms were accumulated," said Baishali Ganguly, a Salt Lake BLO.
"We were terrified over missing targets. At least the pressure has eased a little," said Mainak Dutta, a BLO. But others warned that the extension has not addressed systemic issues that made the SIR exercise overwhelming.
A BLO in North 24 Parganas said the ground reality remains unchanged: "Targets are the same, population load is the same, internet connectivity is still patchy. Just adding seven days does not solve everything."
While the initial anxiety stemmed from the availability of documents, voters were also worried about receiving enumeration forms and finding their names on the 2002 electoral roll. Faced with on-ground hurdles, BLOs have started demanding extension of the deadline.
Tanusree Modok Bhattacharjee, a BLO in the College Street area, who is protesting near the EC office, said, "We wanted a two-month extension, as one month is just not enough. Apart from the delays in the distribution and verification process, the BLO app is still not working properly."
Ranjit Mandal, a south Kolkata BLO, said that in the past 27 days, she struggled with lots of confusion as back-to-back instructions were coming to them, resulting in immense mental pressure.
Not only BLOs, AEROs and EROs also took immense workloads to complete this process before the deadline. In turn, many of them put pressure on BLOs by setting targets as part of their planning. An AERO in north Kolkata said, "Had there been an extension before, we would not have needed to put pressure on BLOs. This extension is not giving us any respite as over 90% of the work is already done, and the extension will break the rhythm of work."
(With inputs from Sayantan Chakraborty and Suparna Goswami in Kolkata)