Election commission doubles annual pay for booth level officers

New Delhi: The Election Commission (EC) on Saturday said it has doubled the annual remuneration of its booth-level officers (BLOs), the grassroots-level functionaries who help it prepare electoral rolls.

Since 2015, the BLOs, who help the EC prepare and update the voters’ list at the booth level, were getting Rs 6,000 per annum for their work. The amount now stands at Rs 12,000 annually.

The BLOs are mostly teachers or other state government employees who take care of addition or deletion of voters in their particular booth.

According to new EC norms, one booth will not have more than 1,200 voters.

Besides this, the Commission had also approved a special incentive of Rs 6,000 for the BLOs for Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters’ list starting from Bihar, where the exercise is ongoing.

The poll authority said it has also enhanced remuneration for BLO supervisors from the present Rs 12,000 per annum to Rs 18,000 per annum.

It will now also give honorarium to electoral registration officers (EROs) and assistant EROs (AEROs) to the tune of Rs 30,000 and Rs 25,000 per annum respectively.

“Pure electoral rolls are the bedrock of democracy. The electoral roll machinery, consisting of electoral registration officers, assistant electoral registration officers, BLO supervisors and booth level officers, do a lot of hard work and play a pivotal role in the preparation of impartial and transparent electoral rolls,” the EC said.