The special electoral roll observer, Subrata Gupta, and 13 other electoral roll observers have warned district magistrates in Bengal that some booth-level officers were not marking dead, shifted, absent and duplicate voters as such on their enumeration forms, and instead keeping the forms with them without uploading them on the BLO app.

“This warning assumes significance as Opposition parties have been alleging that the ruling party cadre (of the Trinamool Congress) had been putting pressure on many BLOs to hand over enumeration forms of the dead, shifted, absent and duplicate voters to party workers and booth-level agents. The EC has been receiving complaints that the BLOs were being compelled not to mark dead, absent, shifted or duplicate on the forms of such voters,” said a poll panel source.

The special observer and observers, appointed by the Election Commission on Friday to monitor the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bengal, held a video-conference with district magistrates, who are also district election officers, that same afternoon, where this issue had come up.

Sources said the observers pointed out that 7.03 crore forms had been digitised out of 7.65 crore forms distributed so far.

“According to the progress reports submitted by the DEOs, the figure should have been far higher. Some BLOs have said they were being prevented from marking dead, shifted, absent and duplicate on forms even if they found these were the statuses of the voters on visiting their addresses. The observers made it clear that this should not be done,” said a source.

Another source said it was reported from North and South 24-Parganas that the BLOs were being forced to visit homes of traceless voters six to eight times. A BLO is supposed to visit a voter's residence not more than thrice.

“Around 10 lakh such voters could not be traced.... Yet BLOs are being forced to show that the forms were distributed. At the same time they are being prevented from uploading forms marked dead, shifted, absent and duplicate. The picture is almost the same in other districts,” said the source.

The EC has taken up the issue seriously and wants to ensure that no false information is uploaded on the BLO app, as draft rolls would be prepared based on this information.

“If anything goes wrong, the BLOs will face punishment first and that's why the DEOs were asked to ensure no wrong information is uploaded on the rolls,” said a bureaucrat.

Agitation

A group of 70-odd people, backed by the Trinamool Congress, staged a demonstration in front of chief election officer's office in Calcutta on Friday, demanding compensation for the BLOs who died during the SIR. The agitators included the kin of Zakir Hossain, a BLO from Murshidabad, who died of cardiac failure on Thursday. The family members claimed that the BLOs died because of SIR overwork.