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Three sanitation workers in Hyderabad appointed as Booth Level Officers (BLOs) by the Election Commission have been replaced following outrage after a video surfaced showing one of them admitting that he wasn’t aware how to carry out the ongoing exercise of pre-Special Intensive Revision (SIR) mapping.
In a video reportedly filmed by activist Syed Jalaluddin Zafar at Al-Qurmoshi Global School, Salala, Barkas, a polling station in Chandrayangutta constituency, a sanitation worker named Shiva Krishna appeared untrained and unaware of how to map voters from the latest voter list to the to the electoral rolls of 2002, the last time the SIR was conducted in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh.
When asked why he hadn’t done the mapping for any voters yet, the worker admitted that he didn’t know how to do it.
Following outrage over appointing untrained workers to carry out the sensitive SIR exercise which is already facing criticism in other states for potentially disenfranchising eligible voters, Chandrayangutta Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) V Surender said that the BLO has now been replaced.
According to the ERO, of the 305 BLOs appointed in Chandrayangutta, three were sanitation workers selected due to staff shortage. However, they had all passed Class 9 and were deemed qualified for the work of a BLO, he said.
“There were three such sanitation workers appointed as BLOs due to shortage of staff. They have now been replaced,” the ERO said.
A Booth Level Officer (BLO) is usually a local government or “semi-government” official or a local body official, who is also a voter from the same polling area. Their job involves updating part of the electoral roll.
The District Election Officer (DEO) appoints BLOs in constitution with the ERO of an Assembly constituency. According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the list of categories of employees who can be appointed as a BLO includes teachers, Anganwadi workers, Patwari/Amin/Lekhpal (village-level revenue officials), panchayat secretary, village level workers, electricity bill readers, postman, ANMs (Auxiliary Nurses & Mid-wives), health workers, mid-day meal workers, contract teachers, corporation tax collectors, and clerical staff in urban areas (UDC or Upper Division Clerk and LDC or Lower Division Clerk etc.)
While the ERO said that the sanitation workers were considered eligible for the work of a BLO, the video pointed to inadequate training among BLOs to carry out the pre-SIR mapping.
Telangana Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) C Sudharsan Reddy has said that the SIR exercise is likely to begin in Telangana in May.