‘Unreasonable work pressure’: Several BLOs stage stir, flag ‘severe mental stress’

Kolkata: Several block-level officers (BLOs), on Saturday, staged protests in Howrah and also in Siliguri, alleging that they are being subjected to intense and unreasonable work pressure by the Election Commission (EC), including late-night instructions and sudden orders for digital data entry.

A section of BLOs alleged that the poll body had “suddenly” directed them to shift to digital data entry and undergo immediate training, which they said was impossible to manage at such short notice. Some BLOs claimed that the EC is adding fresh responsibilities on them day after day, and this is adding to their existing work pressure. A few claimed they were receiving calls from the EC “late into the night”, disrupting their personal lives.

On Friday, 240 BLOs of Shibpur Assembly Constituency, Howrah, were scheduled to undergo data-entry training at a government office on the East-West Bypass in Tikiapara. They alleged that they were being asked to enter data twice, once manually and again digitally. The BLOs also alleged that several older officers were unfamiliar with technology and struggling with the transition.

A protest at Siliguri’s Dinabandhu Mancha training centre turned chaotic as several BLOs walked out of an ongoing digital data-entry training session, shouting slogans. Meanwhile, a group of booth-level officers in East Burdwan’s Katwa staged a demonstration in front of the Katwa-I block office, flagging “severe mental stress” because of “immense workload” that included uploading data on a designated app as part of the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. “We are being asked to fill nearly 200 forms both manually and digitally. We cannot take this pressure. If needed, we will submit a deputation to the district magistrate,” a BLO said.

In Bengal, over 80,000 BLOs have been engaged for house-to-house visits and distribution of enumeration forms (EFs) as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.