Telangana SIR: Political parties save the day as BLOs navigate unfamiliar territories to decide electors’ fate
Enrolment of citizens in the ongoing process for the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls could be only as successful as the Booth Level
Enrolment of citizens in the ongoing process for the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls could be only as successful as the Booth Level Officer is competent, or the elector is informed. House to house distribution of enumeration forms which has entered 10th day on Saturday amply proves the same. The only exceptions are the areas where political parties are actively participating to get to as many voters as possible. In majority of the areas, the BLOs are clueless about the areas and houses to be covered. Drawn from several departments which hardly have any public contact, they are unable to understand the vague maps given to them on the mobile app. Instead, several are visiting only the houses from where they are receiving calls, or those that the Booth Level Agents of political parties are taking them to.
BLOs are drawn from 10-15 departments including Urban Development, Health, Women & Child Welfare, Education, Revenue, and even Road and Buildings. They have all kinds of job descriptions, such as record assistants, junior and senior assistants, ASHA workers, Anganwadi workers, Sanitary Jawans, and others. Though their designation is Booth Level Officer, in most cases, they are not even remotely connected to the polling station they have been given. To complicate the matters, they are given polling stations far from the areas of their convenience, so several of them are struggling with the maps unable to understand which houses comes under their purview. “I work as binder in the government printing press. About 200 from our press have been deputed as BLOs, all in areas far away. I often end up standing on the streets and wondering where I am,” shared Venkatram (name changed), a BLO who is deputed to cover parts of Malakpet constituency.
He starts his day at 9 a.m., and finishes around midnight., and devotes most of the time to make calls to the voters whose phone numbers are available in the app. “It’s easier to navigate this way,” he says, “AIMIM workers are very helpful though. They have absolute information about every voter in the polling stations concerned.” In fact, MIM has designed a mobile app which has information about all the electors, and is much better than the mobile app available to the BLOs. “BLOs in our area are ASHA workers and Anganwadi workers who cannot even write names correctly. I had to correct my name and phone number three to four times before they got it right. How can we expect their help in form filling or for finding our names in previous SIR roll?” questioned V.
The BriefWire