On the eve of the SIR rollout, booth level officers (BLOs) in Old Malda staged a demonstration in front of the block development officer’s office on Monday, protesting what they termed as an “inhuman workload.”
Around 100 BLOs demonstrated for nearly half an hour after their training session at the BDO’s office. “Many of us work as primary or high school teachers. We have to teach students during school hours and then carry out BLO’s duties after that. It’s inhuman — we end up working eight to 10 hours a day,” said Soma Bhagat, a primary school teacher and BLO.
Partha Sanyal, also a teacher who has been assigned as a BLO, echoed her.
“We should either be officially released from school duties as ‘on duty’ to perform BLO tasks, or be exempted altogether. Some of us work at schools 50 to 90 kilometres from home. It is virtually impossible to handle both responsibilities simultaneously,” he said.
The BLOs alleged that, apart from the heavy workload, they were also under political pressure as political parties were frequently targeting them on the SIR issue.
On Monday, Krishnendu Narayan Choudhury, the chairman of Englishbazar municipality and a Trinamool leader, at a training programme for the party's booth-level agents (BLAs), alleged that BLOs would “visit homes to eliminate people’s names as voters". Both the BJP and Left criticised him for the statement.