New Delhi: Nearly 250 primary school teachers assigned as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) halted work and held a sit-in protest on Thursday (November 27) at the data uploading centre in Khokhra, Ahmedabad, alleging "threat and pressure" during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

The teachers alleged that they are not given any proper guidance and officials were issuing threats and placing unreasonable demands on them to meet SIR deadlines. BLO, particularly female BLOs said the public circulation of their phone numbers had led to late-night abuse. Moreover, the teachers also underlined that they are under extreme strain due to long working hours since they are required to reach the centre at 7 am, conduct field work until early afternoon, and return to duty after lunch with no fixed end time. Teachers also pointed to server outages that forced them to do the work even late at night, The Indian Express reported.

“We would get calls from our seniors even at midnight or 1 am asking us to do the data entry and upload names for mapping when the server starts functioning. There is no time for us to spend time with family for the last three weeks,” a protestor told IE.

The report mentioned that 246 Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation School Board refused to proceed with their duties after heated arguments between BLOs and election officials at K.K. Shastri College, the uploading hub for the Amraiwadi assembly segment. “This is not 20 days’ work, but it requires at least 60 days. This is not the issue of Amraiwadi Vidhan Sabha but all constituencies in Ahmedabad,” one BLO was quoted as saying by IE.

“When we informed the officials that we are not able to find the names of voters in the 2002 voter list for mapping, I was rudely told that I have to search voters only from Amraiwadi constituency and not from the rest of the country. There is no solution or help offered to us but they [election officials] put pressure on us to achieve the target,” another teacher was quoted as saying by IE.

Another protester described the dual pressure they faced: “From submitting voter forms as only absent, shifted, death (ASD) to mapping of each voter, the BLOs are unnecessarily being threatened and pressured to complete the work. On one side it is the officials, on the other we get anonymous abusive calls. The major lapse on the part of the government is that they did not spread awareness among people. Hardly anyone fills the forms and asks us to do that,” IE reported.

Speaking to IE, president of the Ahmedabad Municipal Teachers Association, Manoj Patel underlined that the BLOs need technical staff and additional support staff for mapping. Further, he pointed out that "despite working so hard,  BLOs are being threatened".

According to election authorities, 50,963 BLOs are currently deployed across Gujarat. The updated voter list reflects 5.08 crore registered electors.The counting process for the SIR will commence on December 4.

Across the country, several alleged suicides of BLOs have been reported in recent weeks, including in West Bengal, with officials linking the incidents to stress and pressure associated with the SIR exercise. While investigations are still underway in many of these cases, the reports have intensified concerns over workload, official expectations, and the broader conditions under which BLOs are carrying out the ongoing revision exercise.

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