Uphill task, tight deadline: BLOs feel SIR duty heat

Kolkata: With barely a month to complete a massive voter verification exercise, thousands of booth level officers (BLOs) across Kolkata and the districts are battling gruelling schedules, personal hardships and mounting fatigue as they race to finish the first round of home visits in a week and the process of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls by Dec 4.Most BLOs — mainly school teachers and govt clerks — TOI spoke to were asked to finish home visits and form distribution in just six days across nearly 600 households each, all while balancing their primary jobs.For Shilpa Sarkar Dey, an urban development department clerk and mother of a two-year-old, the SIR duty has turned her daily life upside down. "I leave home at 9 am and start door-to-door visits by 10. After a quick lunch, I continue till evening before submitting documents at the SDO office. I reach home at night, barely getting time with my child. But duty comes first," said Dey, posted in Salt Lake.Baishali Ganguly, a Baguiati schoolteacher nursing an injured leg, said her work had become physically draining. "The area I cover has several four- and five-storey buildings with no elevators. Climbing up and down the stairs all day is exhausting, but I can't slow down. There's a strict deadline and elderly voters need help filling forms," she said.The SIR process began on Nov 4 and BLOs must distribute and collect filled enumeration forms by Dec 4. However, many said the tight schedule and initial shortage of forms slowed progress. "In the first lot, I got about 300 forms and could distribute only 137 in three days," said Arup Mondal, a school teacher in Tollygunge. "Balancing school work and SIR duties is extremely difficult. With a little more time, the work could have been done more efficiently."While the Election Commission hasn't issued a written timeline for form distribution, several supervisors have instructed BLOs to finish this phase in a week. "We've been told to complete distribution quickly because the collection phase will take longer, given the number of errors and corrections expected," said a BLO from Shyambazar.Sarita Rana, a Bhowanipore BLO and schoolteacher from Metiabruz, fears falling behind in her academic syllabus. "I've been handed 500 forms and distributed 280 so far. It's impossible to finish within the timeframe. After returning home, I stay up late recording details to keep track," she said.In north Kolkata, Pranab Kumar Barua, the lone commerce teacher at Metropolitan Institution (Main), is juggling classes and SIR duties for 738 voters in Jorasanko. "If I miss school, my students suffer. So, I visit homes early morning from 8 to 9.30 am and again after school till 10 pm," he said.Each booth has an average of 800 to 1,400 voters. This approximately translates to 400 to 500 households per booth. Each BLO has to go to all these households at least twice – to hand over the forms and then to collect the forms. Supervisors admit the workload is overwhelming but insist that proper planning can help meet deadlines. "We have decided to finish distribution within a week so that we can devote the rest of the time to collecting and verifying forms," said Suman Ghosh, supervisor in Shyampukur.(With inputs from Dipawali Mitra)