Kolkata: Booth-level officers, engaged in the ongoing SIR process in West Bengal, scuffled with police personnel on Monday while trying to enter the CEO’s office here during a demonstration to protest against alleged excessive work pressure, a senior officer said.
Members of the BLO Adhikar Raksha Committee took out the procession from College Square in north Kolkata, carrying locks and fetters to symbolically close the main entrance of the building in which the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) is housed.
The demonstrators tried to breach police barricades to enter the CEO’s office in central Kolkata, the officer said.
The protesting BLOs raised slogans against the Election Commission, alleging that they were forced to hold the procession as the “poll panel did not respond to their complaints of intense and inhuman work pressure during the SIR exercise”.
“BLOs have been directed to complete tasks within a short period, though the same work usually takes more than two years,” a functionary claimed.
The committee also alleged that BLOs were falling sick and two of them died by suicide due to stress.
The BLO Adhikar Raksha Committee had earlier announced that para-teachers, college professors and teachers from several organisations would join the march to press for immediate intervention by the Election Commission.
House-to-house enumeration under the SIR began on November 4 and will continue till December 4, with draft rolls scheduled for publication on December 9.
The committee warned that if deadlines are not extended or corrective steps are not taken, it will launch a continuous protest programme.
Meanwhile, another organisation, BLO Oikya Mancha, had separately flagged issues related to the digitisation of enumeration forms and demanded additional support staff.
It had submitted a deputation on November 22.
