Two BLOs in Kerala, Rajasthan die by suicide; families allege SIR-related pressure
New Delhi: Two booth-level officers (BLOs) involved in the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls have died by suicide in Kerala and Rajasthan, triggering concerns about rising field-level stress during the voter list update exercise. While families and teachers’ groups have alleged excessive work pressure, district administrations in both states have denied any link between SIR duties and the deaths, citing official data and ongoing inquiries.
In Kerala’s Kannur district, 44-year-old school office assistant and BLO Aneesh George was found dead at his home on Sunday, The Indian Express reported. His family and friends told the newspaper that George had been overwhelmed by the pressure to complete the enumeration work assigned to him under the SIR programme.
George had been allotted the 18th booth in Payyannur taluk, but according to a friend quoted by Express, he was unfamiliar with the area and struggled to distribute the required enumeration forms. Another friend told the paper that George had sought help from booth-level agents of political parties but did not receive support.
However, the Kannur district administration issued a detailed press release rejecting the claim that work pressure contributed to his death. It stated that George’s progress “was consistent with both district and constituency levels” and that “at no stage were special targets, pressures, or deadlines issued to him.”
According to the administration, of the 1,065 enumeration forms in the booth, 825 had been distributed, and although 240 were initially shown as pending, updates on November 15 revealed that only 50 remained because many had been delivered earlier but not digitally marked. As of November 16, the district had completed 87.28 percent of form distribution, slightly below the Kerala average of 91.26 percent.
The administration further stated that initial enquiries by the police and district officials found “no linkage” between SIR duties and the suicide. “The cause of the suicide remains unclear pending further investigation,” the statement said.
Mathrubhumi reported that Kerala’s Chief Electoral Officer Rathan U Kelkar noted that the revision process is typically completed within 31 days and that no earlier complaints of excessive pressure had been received.
But the panchayat president of Kankol-Alappadamba, M.V. Sunil Kumar, contradicted the official version. Speaking to The Hindu, he said George had been under “extreme pressure” and had repeatedly told superiors that he could not cope with the workload. According to him, officials insisted that the work must be completed regardless.
A similar incident was reported from Rajasthan’s Jaipur district, where 45-year-old Mukesh Jangid, a government school teacher and BLO, died on Sunday after allegedly jumping in front of a train near the Bindayaka railway crossing. Bindayaka SHO Vinod Verma confirmed the incident, though detailed findings are awaited.
According to a PTI report, Jangid’s brother Gajanand claimed to have recovered a suicide note in which Jangid wrote that he was under severe stress due to SIR duties, and that a supervisor had pressured him and threatened suspension.
The Times of India reported that Jangid, a resident of Kalwad village, had been assigned BLO responsibilities in Jaipur’s Jhotwara area.
His death has sparked unrest among teachers’ groups in the state. Rajasthan Primary and Secondary Teachers’ Association president Vipin Prakash Sharma told PTI that competition among administrative divisions to top SIR performance rankings was creating “excessive pressure” on BLOs. He said the association would submit a memorandum to the chief minister urging a halt to undue pressure, especially with half-yearly examinations approaching.
The two deaths, reported from different states within the same 24-hour period—have widened the debate over the stress faced by booth-level officers during the Election Commission’s ongoing voter list revision. While administrations in Kerala and Rajasthan insist no connection has been established, families and teachers’ groups say field officers are being burdened beyond capacity in the push to meet SIR targets.
Both cases remain under investigation.
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Oath-taking ceremony of first BJP govt in Bengal on May 9; Modi, Shah likely to attend
Kolkata (PTI): The oath-taking ceremony of the first BJP government in West Bengal will be held at Brigade Parade Ground here on May 9, marking the saffron camp’s arrival in power in a state after decades on the political fringes.
The ceremony, scheduled to begin at 10 am, is expected to witness the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president Nitin Nabin, several Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP- and NDA-ruled states, party sources said.
“The new BJP government will take oath on May 9 at 10 am at Brigade Parade Ground,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya announced on Wednesday.
Even as the BJP leadership kept its cards close to the chest on the chief ministerial face, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari has emerged as a frontrunner in internal discussions after cementing his position as the party’s principal mass leader in Bengal politics.
Adhikari, once among Mamata Banerjee’s closest lieutenants and a key architect of the TMC’s rural expansion in districts such as Purba Medinipur, crossed over to the BJP ahead of the 2021 assembly elections and went on to defeat Banerjee in Nandigram in one of Bengal’s fiercest political battles.
Five years later, he again found himself at the centre of Bengal’s political churn by beating Banerjee in her own turf at Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes.
Other names for the CM post doing the rounds include Bhattacharya, Union minister Sukanta Majumdar and former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, though party insiders indicated that the leadership was inclined towards projecting a “bhumiputra” face rooted in Bengal’s linguistic and cultural ethos.
During the campaign, Shah repeatedly asserted that the BJP’s chief minister in Bengal would be a “son of the soil”, born and educated in the state, in an attempt to blunt the TMC’s sustained attack that the BJP represented an “outsider” political culture alien to Bengal’s social and intellectual traditions.
The BJP bagged 207 of the 294 assembly seats in the recently concluded elections, ending the Trinamool Congress’s uninterrupted 15-year rule and scripting the saffron party’s biggest breakthrough in a state where it once struggled to open its electoral account.
Significantly, the swearing-in ceremony will be held on the 25th day of Baisakh in the Bengali calendar — observed across the state as Rabindra Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore — lending the event a deeper cultural symbolism.
According to BJP leaders, the choice of the date is aimed at embedding the party’s historic rise within Bengal’s cultural imagination and countering the long-standing perception battle over identity and belonging.
Over the last decade, the BJP has steadily attempted to appropriate and reinterpret icons of Bengal’s cultural nationalism — from Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee — as part of a broader ideological effort to expand its emotional and political footprint in the state.
Party insiders said the leadership was also conscious of the need to balance Bengal’s competing regional aspirations while choosing the chief ministerial face, with discussions also taking place around whether greater representation should be accorded to north Bengal, a region where the BJP has made substantial electoral gains over successive elections.
A meeting of the newly elected BJP MLAs has been convened on May 8 evening, party sources said, though the leadership remained tight-lipped over the final choice.
The Brigade Parade Ground ceremony is expected to mark not merely a transfer of power, but a defining moment in Bengal’s political history, the culmination of the BJP’s long ideological and organisational march from the margins to the centre of power in a state that had for decades resisted the saffron surge seen elsewhere in India.
