Follow TNM's WhatsApp channel for news updates and story links.
Anju John (name changed), a Booth Level Officer (BLO) in rural Palakkad, was sipping a cup of black tea when TNM called her on the evening of Tuesday, November 11. “This tea that I was offered at one of the houses I visited is the only thing I have had since breakfast. It is 4.30 pm now, and I still have many houses left to visit.”
Anju is among the 25,149 BLOs working across the state to finish the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, officially due on December 4 but effectively much earlier for many on the ground. As the clock ticks toward the deadline, Kerala’s BLOs are racing to meet these overlapping timelines while managing the exhaustive, house-to-house enumeration required for the SIR.
Their task may sound straightforward on paper: distributing and collecting voter enumeration forms. But in reality, many BLOs say, it’s a job marked by long hours, skipped meals, and the mounting pressure of increasingly tight deadlines.
New, unofficial deadlines
The second phase of the SIR began on November 4 in nine states and three Union Territories, including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Puducherry, which are set to go to polls in 2026.
The first stage of the electoral roll ‘purification’ efforts include house-to-house enumeration where BLOs visit each house to hand over unique forms to every single voter. They then have to make a second visit to collect the filled forms, before submitting them to the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), who oversees the roll for each assembly constituency. For Kerala, the 2002 SIR rolls serve as the base document. Voters can also fill the forms online.
Door-to-door enumeration is scheduled to be concluded by December 4, and a draft electoral roll will be published on December 9. However, with local body polls scheduled for the second week of December, many BLOs in Kerala told TNM that unofficial deadlines ranging from November 14-16 have been set for them to finish distribution of forms.
The Kerala government, meanwhile, petitioned the High Court seeking a postponement, citing the administrative strain of managing both elections and SIR simultaneously. The state is scheduled to hold its two-phase local body elections on December 9 and 11. On Thursday, November 13, the court asked the state to approach the Supreme Court, where similar petitions are pending.
As on November 12, more than 1.5 crore enumeration forms have been distributed across Kerala, a state with about 2.78 crore voters. Kerala’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Ratan U Kelkar told TNM that the state is on track to complete form distribution by November 16. He added that although ECI has provided a deadline of December 4, they aim to complete the process by November 25.
While the numbers suggest a smooth process, BLOs on ground who spoke to TNM describe a very different reality.
Battling time
BLOs represent the ECI at the grassroots level, and play a crucial role in ensuring free and transparent elections. Their duties as part of the SIR process include identifying duplicate or deceased entries, checking for migration or transfer, and verifying spelling and personal details. For BLOs on ground, however, time is the biggest challenge.
Several spoke of an exhausting schedule. A BLO from the Thrissur Assembly constituency told TNM on November 11, “I have over 500 forms left to distribute, that’s nearly half of my total.”
She further said, “The maximum number of forms a day that can be distributed is around 70-80. One day, I distributed 100. Initially, we were told to fill out the forms for the voters. That took so much time, and now we have been instructed only to distribute.”
It’s not just about giving the forms, the BLOs say. “People have doubts, elders take time to understand, and some may not be home during the day. We’re constantly on the move, often without food or rest.”
Lack of awareness, know-how
A major share of the voters she visited were unaware of the SIR being held, a BLO from Kanjirappally told TNM. “Not even one percent of people know about SIR.” She and other BLOS said that most voters assume that the house visit is regarding the approaching local body elections. “Merely explaining what SIR is takes up to 20 minutes at each house,” she said.
She added that she does a lot of “homework,” like planning her route in advance, arranging the forms of every voter from a single house together, and compiling available data on existing voters before each house visit. As another BLO put it, “It’s full-time work with no rest.”
In Thrissur, a BLO told TNM that he manages to distribute only 30 to 40 forms a day because “most of the time, we need to sit with individuals to fill out the forms.” He added that they often have to visit the same household multiple times since forms are issued by the district administration in batches.
An Anganwadi teacher working as the BLO in the suburbs of Ernakulam district said, “I think it’s impossible to complete the enumeration process by the deadline.” She explained that assisting voters with filling out forms consumes much of their time and suggested holding the process in a single location to save time.
Issues faced by women voters
A BLO from Kayamkulam explained to TNM that the process has been especially difficult when it comes to women who got married and shifted residences. “We have their voter records from 2025, but nothing from 2002, which is the cut-off year for the SIR. So we tell them to try and find the voter number their parents used back then and give it to us. They say they won’t be able to do that,” she said.
Another officer from Poonjar in Kottayam district expressed similar concerns. “Oftentimes, it is a change in their last names, initials, or even just a spacing error that makes it impossible to find their details from 2002. There have been times when I have not been able to find a woman voter at all from the old electoral roll,” she said.
Similar issues persist in the cases of other voters who have shifted residences in the last two decades. According to a BLO from Vengara, finding people has been one of the biggest challenges. “Many have moved away from these places, and we have no way of contacting them. There are no phone numbers, no father’s name or husband’s name for us to trace them. There’s a lot of ground to cover in the middle of all this confusion,” she said.
Poor network connectivity in rural areas
Some BLOs, especially those working in rural areas, have also raised concerns about poor network connectivity. The BLO of a polling booth in Pathanamthitta district’s Aranmula said that updating the district server during each house visit takes time due to network issues. Anju, the BLO from Palakkad, also raised a similar concern. “In rural areas, it’s very difficult to get network access,” she said.
Besides connectivity issues, the BLOs working in rural areas listed other hassles they face. He has been chased twice by street dogs while distributing the enumeration forms, the BLO from Aranmula said.
For Anju, the houses are far apart, which means a lot of time is taken to cover even a small area. “Many people here work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and are not available in the mornings. I have completed only around 20% of the work so far, and thinking about the remaining portion is really stressful,” she said.
There is also the issue of overlap when it comes to houses being allotted to the officers. A BLO from Nilambur explained, “Sometimes I get two people in a house, and another BLO gets the remaining three. In many places, we end up going to the same houses. The house next to the one I visit will be assigned to another BLO,” she said. Several of the BLOs TNM spoke to said that often, houses on either side of the road would be assigned to different BLOs.
“If we had more time, we could have planned and exchanged houses, so that everyone didn’t have to go everywhere. But we didn’t know any of this earlier, so now everyone is just going everywhere,” the Nilambur BLO said. Currently, the houses assigned to her are far apart, which means that she can only cover about 10–15 houses a day.
‘Managing two jobs’
Even though BLOs are expected to focus solely on the SIR process in the window between November 4 and December 4, the reality for many is different. Many are, in fact, managing their regular jobs alongside the house visits and enumeration.
The BLO from Kayamkulam, an Anganwadi worker, told TNM that they have been told it’s all right if they miss work for a few days. “But sometimes we still have to go because the kids need us. So after that, in the evening, I go out again with the forms,” she said.
“I am a clerk at a school. Every half hour, I get a call from school regarding some or the other work there. So I have to manage my regular work too,” said the BLO from Aranmula.
Another is employed in an office of the Local Self-Government Department. With the local body elections approaching, she has to manage the BLO work as well as election-related work assigned by her department. “There is a lot of pressure and a lot of risk,” she said.
Changes in requirements
According to Chief Electoral Officer Kelkar, the BLOs in the state have expressed confidence in finishing the work within the stipulated time. “Many BLOs have completed their assigned tasks within just a few days, showcasing the strength of local planning and execution,” he said.
However, the CEO’s confidence is not reflected in the words of the BLOs working on ground, who say the expectations are “not realistic”.
The responsibilities of the enumerators have expanded without warning, said a BLO from Vengara. “We were initially told that we only had to distribute the forms and collect them back. But now the app has been updated, and we have to enter all the details ourselves.”
There have also been sudden changes in language requirements. “Earlier they said we could fill the forms in Malayalam or English. Now they say it has to be English only. Three-fourths of the people have already filled in the forms in Malayalam. When we enter everything in English into the app, there’s a chance of spelling mistakes and other errors,” the BLO said.
These changing demands have made the deadlines become impossible, she said. “We were told we had time until December 4 to collect the forms from people. Now they’re saying we have to finish updating everything in the app by November 15. But my booth has around 1,400 voters. How are we expected to collect and upload all this data within that time?”
Stressing that the deadlines are not practical, she said, “We would really like it if this data entry requirement could be removed, or at least if the timeline is extended. It’s not realistic to expect us to finish all of this so quickly.”
‘Will check draft rolls’
Representatives of both the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) acknowledged that the SIR is currently being carried out in the state without complaints from voters. However, they stressed that they will look out for discrepancies when the draft roll is published.
“Booth level officers are doing their jobs efficiently. Currently there are no complaints. But we will look into it after the draft roll is published,” said Ashish Moothedath, the Congress mandalam president of Thrissur North.
Subhash U, a CPI(M) candidate for the local body polls in Keralassery, Palakkad, said that concerns of eligible voters being deleted from the rolls, as was reported from Bihar, do not arise in Kerala. “Bihar and Kerala are very different, we can’t compare the two states. There might be some complaints after the publication of the draft roll,” he said. Subhash added that even though the CPI(M) is principally opposed to the SIR, party workers are always willing to help BLOs with the enumeration process.
With inputs from Lakshmi Priya, Haritha John, Maria Teresa Raju