‘Stress due to SIR duty’: BLO kills self in Guj

Kodinar: A school teacher deployed to work as a Booth Level Officer (BLO) allegedly died by suicide in Gujarat’s Gir Somnath district on Friday, with his family claiming that he left a note citing “mental stress and exhaustion” due to the SIR of electoral rolls as reasons behind the extreme step.

The teacher, Arvind Vadher, hanged himself at his house in Devli village of Kodinar taluka at around 6.30 am, an official said.

Vadher was a teacher at a government primary school in Chhara village in Kodinar, and was recently assigned the duty as a BLO for the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.

In the purported suicide note addressed to his wife, Vadher blamed the SIR duty for taking the extreme step.

“It is now impossible for me to do this SIR work anymore. I have been feeling exhausted and mentally stressed for the past few days. Please take care of our son...I don’t have any other choice but to take this step,” Vadher purportedly said in the note.

Gir Somnath Collector and District Election Officer N V Upadhyay said the police are investigating the suicide from all the angles.

He said Vadher’s suicide came as a shocker because he was one of the ‘top performing BLOs’ in the district, and he had already finished over 40 per cent of his work.

Following the incident, a delegation of Gujarat Rajya Prathmik Shikshak Sangh, an association of government primary teachers, met election officials in Gandhinagar and made a representation about issues being faced by teachers working as BLOs.

On Thursday, a school teacher working as a BLO in Kheda district of the state died of a heart attack, with his family attributing his death to “excessive work pressure” linked to the ongoing SIR of electoral rolls.

BLO Rameshbhai Parmar (50), a resident of Jambudi village in Kapadvanj taluka in Kheda, died of a heart attack in his sleep at his home during the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday.