A booth-level officer died of a heart attack while on SIR duty at a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district on Thursday, with his family accusing senior administrative officers of forcing him to work overtime.
Sarvesh Kumar Gangwar, 47, fainted and fell from his chair around 11.30am while verifying voter details at a primary school in Pardhaul village under Bhojipura block, where he was an assistant teacher.
Sarvesh hailed from Kasarat village in the adjoining Shahjahanpur district and had been working in Bareilly for the last 10 years. His wife Prabha had died of cancer two months ago, leaving two five-year-old twins, Ahana and Ayansha, under his care.
Block education officer Vivek Sharma said: “Sarvesh was rushed to a local health centre and then to a hospital, where the doctors declared him dead. There was blood in his nose. The doctors cited a heart attack as the reason for his death.”
Bareilly district magistrate Avinash Singh said Sarvesh was a good worker. “He died on duty, so we are trying to provide every possible support to his dependents,” he said.
Sarvesh’s elder brother, Yogesh Gangwar, said he had joined the school as a teacher in 2015. “Sarvesh had requested his officers not to assign SIR-related work to him as he was already under a lot of stress. But nobody listened to him.”
Yogesh, who is also a teacher and works as a supervisor of the BLOs in Shahjahanpur, said: “I personally try to take care of the problems of the BLOs. But there were instances when they were humiliated and threatened for pointing out that the Election Commission website or the app didn’t work during the day and the Internet connections were patchy. Sarvesh used to reach the school by 5am, go for field duty and work till midnight.”
Naresh Gangwar, district president of Uttar Pradesh Primary Teachers’ Association, said the administrative officers were misbehaving with the BLOs and mounting undue pressure on them to complete the SIR work within the deadline.
“They are unable to sleep for more than four hours a day. Each BLO is expected to collect over 40 forms a day and upload the data to the EC website, even though people are not always cooperating and the EC website and app keep crashing. An inquiry should be initiated into the death and those guilty of pressuring him should be punished,” he said.
Naresh demanded that the state government give ₹1 crore to the two children of the deceased and make permanent arrangements for them so that they lead a good life and study well.
“The SIR deadline should be extended for six months so that the BLOs can complete their work comfortably,” he added.