A state-level delegation of booth-level officers met Bengal chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal in Calcutta on Saturday to complain against “excessive workload”, coinciding with BLOs demonstrating at multiple locations across Bengal, refusing to digitise enumeration forms.

From Siliguri in the north to Barrackpore, Barasat and Ranaghat in the south, protesting BLOs said they could not bear the “abnormal workload” thrust upon them to implement the Election Commission of India’s special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

“We were trained and told to distribute and collect enumeration forms. For the past 10 days or so, we have been toiling hard for it. Now, we are being told to digitise the day’s work using our cell phones. This is not possible. The Election Commission should make arrangements like engaging data entry operators for this job,” said Somnath Moulik, a BLO of ward 17 of Siliguri.

In Siliguri, the BLOs staged a protest at Dinabandhu Mancha on Saturday during their digitisation training programme. The demonstration, which halted the training, came in response to a recent directive from the EC that requires BLOs to feed voter data from the physical forms into an app. This, the BLOs say, is practically unmanageable alongside their ongoing responsibilities.

Similar protests erupted at Ranaghat-II block in Nadia, the Barrackpore SDO’s office in North 24-Paraganas, and two locations under the district’s Barasat subdivision.

“We are committed to our duties, but the added burden of online data entry without support or resources is not something we can handle. Many of us are not competent even in using our cell phones,” said a protesting BLO in Siliguri.

The deterrents underscore the growing concerns among field officials about meeting the EC deadlines while completing voter data digitisation with accuracy.

The Votekarmi O BLO Aikya Mancha delegation, which gave a memo to CEO Manoj Agarwal in Calcutta, listed the problems.

Mancha general secretary Swapan Mandal said the slow server and poor Internet hampered work and sought data entry operators for digitisation. According to him, officials at the CEO’s office assured them that spaces would be earmarked in administrative offices for the BLOs to carry out digitisation. Also, ways to simplify the app and uploading were being looked into.

Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the Opposition, blamed the state government for the BLO plight. He said that for the Bihar SIR, the state government had deputed hundreds of data entry operators, but the Bengal government did not respond to the EC’s request to hire such staff.