West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she was “profoundly shocked” after the death of another Booth Level Officer (BLO), a woman para-teacher who allegedly died by suicide in Krishnanagar on Wednesday, becoming the third BLO in the state to die during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
The BLO, identified as Rinku Tarafdar, assigned to Part No. 201 of Assembly Constituency 82 Chapra, reportedly blamed the Election Commission of India (ECI) in her suicide note before taking her life at her residence.
“The Election Commission is responsible for this end of mine. I do not support any political party, I am a very ordinary person, but I cannot bear this inhuman pressure anymore. I am a para-teacher; my salary is meagre compared to the labourers, yet they did not spare me,” reads the suicide note, originally written in Bengali.
The note goes on to describe the strain she said she was subjected to during SIR duties, stating, “I have finished spending ₹7,000 on offline charges, but I cannot do anything online. Even after informing the BDO office and the supervisor, no action was taken. Since there was no one for Part 20, they burdened me with the work, but later many others were appointed as BLOs in different parts.”
The note goes on to describe the strain she said she was subjected to during SIR duties, stating: “I have finished spending ₹7,000 on offline charges, but I cannot do anything online. Even after informing the BDO office and the supervisor, no action was taken. Since there was no one for Part 20, they burdened me with the work, but later many others were appointed as BLOs in different parts.”
Asking “How many more lives will be lost?” and calling the situation “truly alarming,” Banerjee demanded accountability from the Commission.
Tarafdar’s death follows that of BLO Shanti Muni Oraon, a tribal woman from Mal in Jalpaiguri district, whose body was found in the courtyard of her home. Another BLO, Namita Hansda, serving in East Burdwan at the Memari community block, died earlier on November 9 after a cerebral attack, with her husband alleging she was under intense stress due to SIR duties.
Earlier, in a sharply worded letter to the Chief Election Commissioner, Banerjee warned that the Special Intensive Revision process had reached a “deeply alarming stage” because of its “unplanned, chaotic and dangerous” execution.
She criticised the compressed three-month timeline, normally a three-year exercise, as “inhuman” and “dangerously coercive,” noting that multiple BLOs had died since the drive began.
The SIR process, launched by the Election Commission and first rolled out in Bihar before expanding to 12 states and Union Territories, involves house-to-house verification to remove duplicate, deceased, shifted or ineligible voter entries while adding new eligible voters.
In Kerala, the November 16 death of school attendant Aneesh George was reported in the context of alleged work pressure linked to SIR duties.
Rajasthan recorded two similar cases, with teacher Mukesh Jangid on November 16 and Hariom Bairwa on November 20 both described as having been under strain related to digitisation targets and follow-ups on uploads.
Gujarat also saw two incidents on November 20, where Rameshbhai Parmar in Kheda and Arvind Vadher in Gir Somnath were said to be facing intense workload demands and deadline pressures associated with the revision exercise.
In Madhya Pradesh, reports on November 21 involving Ramakant Pandey in Raisen and Sitaram Gond in Damoh cited heavy enumeration loads and data-entry requirements as sources of pressure during the SIR process.
However, it has drawn sharp criticism from opposition parties, who allege that it is being conducted hastily, without transparency, and with the intent of disenfranchising minorities, particularly Muslims.
The Bihar phase triggered a major political uproar, with opposition parties accusing the ECI of bias toward the BJP, and concerns have intensified as the exercise advances into states governed by opposition parties, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, all of which face elections in 2026.
The post “I cannot bear this inhuman pressure anymore,” another BLO in West Bengal dies by suicide appeared first on Maktoob media.
