Kolkata, March 5 – A Booth Level Officer (BLO) and an elderly person died in West Bengal on Thursday. The deceased's family members alleged that they died due to the heavy workload and panic caused by the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise and the voter list in the state.
According to police, the BLO who died in the West Midnapore district is Subimal Karak. He was 58 years old and lived in the Hatimari area of the Shalboni police station.
He was working as a teacher at the Sabli Primary School and also as the BLO for the Hatimari booth.
The family stated that Subimal was reluctant to take on the responsibility related to the SIR exercise from the beginning due to his age and poor health. However, he was still assigned the responsibility of being the BLO. The family claimed that he had been under significant mental stress for a long time due to this.
Subimal suddenly fell ill on Thursday morning, and the family quickly took him to a local doctor. However, he was declared dead.
Local Trinamool Congress MLA, Sujoy Hazra, visited the deceased man's house on Thursday afternoon after hearing about the incident. He said, "This is not the Election Commission, but the Torture Commission. People will never forget this abuse. The Election Commission is responsible for this."
The deceased man's daughter, Suchandrima Karak, told reporters, "My father was under a lot of pressure. He had to work all day, and even late at night. My father already had heart problems. That's why he didn't want to take on the responsibility. Now everything is over for us."
Following this, questions were raised about the workload of the BLOs. However, BJP spokesperson for the Midnapore organizational district, Arup Das, said, "Any death is unfortunate. But now Trinamool is blaming the Election Commission whenever someone dies. This dirty politics should stop."
Meanwhile, the name of the deceased in Ranaghat of Nadia district is Jaydev Dutta. He was 62 years old. The family claimed that his name was not in the final voter list published on February 28 after the SIR exercise.
They said that Jaydev was worried about this, and he died of a heart attack on Thursday morning.
According to family members, Jaydev did not have all of his father's documents. He provided some of his own documents during the SIR hearing. However, after the final list was published, he became mentally distressed after seeing his name listed in the deleted category.
