A booth-level officer (BLO) in North Dinajpur has taken her son alongside during the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) drive, and he has taken money from voters in exchange for filling out their enumeration forms.
Booth 194 at Abdulghata in the Kamalabari 1 gram panchayat of Raiganj block has 846 voters, and Dipali Sarkar, a resident, is the BLO.
When Dipali visited households to distribute the enumeration forms for the SIR, her son Rupanta accompanied her door-to-door to help voters fill out the enumeration forms and took ₹20 from each person for doing so.
“The BLO went door to door with her son and was taking ₹20 for filling the forms. They came to my house, too, but I refused to pay,” said Babul Biswas, a voter of the area.
Shankari Mondal, another resident, said: “The BLO came with two young men. They filled out my form. They charged ₹20 for each form.”
A local political leader who did not want to be named said what the BLO had done was a blatant violation of the Election Commission’s rules.
Dipali and her son admitted that they had charged the voters for filling up the forms.
“The local panchayat member told me to collect ₹20 per form for the work. My son has finished college and is sitting idle at home, so I told him to do it,” said Dipali.
Rupanta said most of the voters were not educated and couldn’t fill out the forms properly. “That is why I am helping them. The local people themselves are giving ₹10 or ₹20 for the service,” he said.
While the BLO claimed that Jayashree Mondal, the local panchayat member, asked her to collect the fee, Amal Mondal, Jayashree’s husband, denied the charge.
“To avoid mistakes, we had advised the villagers to fill in the forms carefully. Later, we heard that the BLO’s son was filling out the forms. But we were unaware that money was being taken, and the moment we learned about it, we alerted them immediately,” said Amal.
Tanmoy Banerjee, the subdivisional officer (SDO) of Raiganj, said: “We have taken note of the case. The matter is being investigated, and the BLO concerned will be summoned soon.”