Kolkata: Booth level officers (BLOs), who were rushing to collect forms first and upload them together, have landed in a problem with the EC asking them to upload all SIR forms they collected, including ‘Uncollectable' ones, by Tuesday midnight.
Issuing an instruction to all district election officers (DEOs), who are also DMs, Manoj Agarwal, CEO, West Bengal, said, "After Dec 2, the forms collected will have to be uploaded on a daily basis, backlogs will not be accepted. If EFs are not handed over by some households by Dec 11, then those should be classified as ‘Uncollectable' and accordingly entered on the app."
The EC on Sunday extended the enumeration for the SIR exercise to Dec 11 from Dec 4. It now wants to utilise this 7-day additional window for rechecking data. No backdated SIR forms can be uploaded from Wednesday.
"All BLOs must utilise this time to reverify entries made by them against the hard copies of enumeration forms. Also, if some forms have been entered by contractual persons, agencies, or private persons, those should be checked thoroughly, since BLOs, being the verifying authority, will be held accountable for lapses which are deliberate in nature," Agarwal said.
The EC has already opened the correction (roll-back) window to correct any entry for EROs/AEROs and BLOs which they suspect was done incorrectly.
In Salt Lake, BLO Baishali Ganguly said she was working overtime to clear the backlog of 83 forms. "The workload became overwhelming. I was told to finish everything within two days and also arrange the forms serially. Several forms required rectification. Seeing that I was struggling alone, my seniors assigned a data-entry operator," Ganguly said.
Subhadeep Ghosh, a BLO from Maheshtala, said that though he completed digitisation more than a week ago, he had to visit the BDO office on Monday and Tuesday to correct 19 forms containing inadvertent errors. "With the edit option removed from the BLO app, we can no longer make changes ourselves. We have to go to the BDO office and carry out the corrections in presence of our superiors," he said.
Another BLO in Behala said she focused first on collecting forms. "I realised it was a wrong approach and that I was falling far behind other BLOs. Since I am not tech-savvy, my son helped me extensively in uploading forms on the BLO app. But even then, the work remained incomplete. Since Sunday, I have been visiting the Alipore office, where a data-entry operator is helping me," she said.