Deaths and reprimands of booth-level officers (BLOs) have accompanied the second phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls underway in 12 states and Union Territories including Bengal.

On the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday, Rameshbhai Parmar, a 50-year-old teacher at a Gujarat government school in Navapura village of Kapadvanj taluka, died of a heart attack at his residence in Jambudi village.

Parmar was recently given the duty of a BLO.

"After finishing his work as a BLO, he returned home around 7.30pm on Wednesday and once again started doing paperwork after freshening up,” his brother Narendra Parmar told reporters.

“Since there is an issue with the mobile network in his village, he came to my house to finish his work. He worked till 11.30pm and returned to his house.

"He then went to sleep after having dinner. But when he did not wake up in the morning, we took him to a nearby hospital, where doctors declared him dead. We believe that he suffered a heart attack due to excessive work pressure," the brother added.

Parmar's daughter Shilpa also said that her father was "under pressure" due to BLO-related work.

Since the SIR exercise started, five BLOs have died – two in West Bengal and one each in Kerala, Rajasthan and Gujarat – and their deaths have been claimed to be linked to the excessive work pressure due to the SIR.

The BLOs are appointed under section 13B (2) of the Representation of People Act, 1950 by the district electoral officer in consultation with the electoral registration officers (EROs) from a pool comprising teachers, contractual teachers, corporation tax collectors, clerical staff in urban areas, anganwadi workers, patwari, panchayat secretary, village level workers, electricity bill readers, postmen, auxiliary nurses and mid-wives and mid-day meal workers.

The Telegraph Online spoke to two BLOs in Kolkata, who requested anonymity for obvious reasons.

One, the principal of a school in Kolkata, said she has to juggle running the school and the distribution and collection of the enumeration forms.

“The work is especially hectic because the voters have our numbers and they are calling us right from 7 in the morning till late at night. We have been given 600 forms. It’s impossible to walk around with a bundle as heavy as that,” the principal-BLO said.

The BLO said the forms were handed over late to them and the entire process has been delayed. Adding to the woes is the problem with the app that they have been provided for entering the data filled up in the forms.

“The voters are calling to ask why their forms have not yet been distributed,” the principal-BLO said.

“We have to explain to every caller that the authorities handed the forms to us late. If we miss even one call, a pending notification appears on the BLO app, which has to be cleared immediately.

“To make matters worse, the app provided to us for data entry is not functioning properly. It is slow, unresponsive and often fails to load.”

There is no respite from the school duties, where the BLO has to go every alternate day.

“I am 55 years old, and for over a week I have been having lunch as late as 6pm because of the workload,” the principal said.

Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, in a letter to chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Thursday, had flagged the pressures on the BLOs while demanding that the SIR exercise be halted.

“The unrealistic workload, impossible timelines, and inadequate support with online data entry have collectively placed the entire process — and its credibility — at severe risk. This strikes at the heart of our electoral democracy,” Mamata wrote in her letter to Gyanesh Kumar.

“BLOS are now operating far beyond human limits,” she wrote, forced to juggle their regular duties with complex digital procedures riddled with “server failures, and repeated data mismatches”.

Another BLO in Kolkata said they have been working in two shifts to meet the workload.

“The forms were handed to us so late that the workload has increased even further,” the BLO, who has been given an area in Behala in south-west Kolkata, said.

“It is extremely strenuous. Voters are calling us multiple times every day, and we often have to visit the same house more than once. Only after visiting a household three times are we allowed to put up a notice,” the BLO said.

“We are not permitted to sit in the office and distribute the forms. No form of gathering is allowed, which makes the process even more time-consuming and exhausting.”

The BLOs also have to face the ire of the booth-level agents (BLAs) appointed by political parties.

“Many voters come to us with incorrectly filled forms,” said the principal-BLO. “I was trying to help one such voter when two people arrived at the BLAs office and verbally abused me. I wanted to lodge a complaint with the police but the supervisor would not allow that.”

Show-cause notices to seven BLOs

The Bengal Chief Electoral Officer’s office has issued show-cause notices to seven BLOs in the Beliaghata constituency in the Calcutta North Lok Sabha seat for alleged lapses in the digitisation process of SIR enumeration forms.

The complaints were regarding improper and incomplete digitisation of the enumeration forms collected, an official told PTI.

The seven BLOs have time till Friday afternoon to reply to the show-cause notices served to them.

(With inputs from PTI)