During a protest against claimed severe work pressure, booth-level officers involved in the ongoing SIR process in West Bengal clashed with police officers on Monday while attempting to access the CEO’s office here, according to a senior officer. In order to symbolically seal the main entrance of the building housing the Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office, members of the BLO Adhikar Raksha Committee marched from College Square in north Kolkata with locks and fetters.
According to the officer, the protesters attempted to get past police barriers in order to visit the CEO’s central Kolkata office. The protesting BLOs chanted anti-Election Commission slogans, claiming that the “poll panel did not respond to their complaints of intense and inhuman work pressure during the SIR exercise” was the reason they were compelled to stage the demonstration.
“BLOs have been directed to complete tasks within a short period, though the same work usually takes more than two years,” a government official stated. Additionally, the committee said that BLOs were becoming ill and that two of them committed suicide as a result of stress. The BLO Adhikar Raksha Committee had already said that instructors from various organisations, college professors, and para-teachers will participate in the march in order to demand that the Election Commission act immediately.
The SIR’s house-to-house enumeration process started on November 4 and will last until December 4. Draft rolls are expected to be released on December 9. The group threatened to start an ongoing protest program if deadlines were not extended or remedial action was not performed.
In the meantime, BLO Oikya Mancha, another organisation, had independently reported problems with the digitising of enumeration forms and requested more support personnel. On November 22, it had sent in a deputation.
