Kolkata, Dec 8 (IANS) Under constant pressure and repeated insistence from the Election Commission of India (ECI), the West Bengal government, on Monday, finally released the first installment of funds for paying the remuneration for the booth-level officers (BLOs) appointed for the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.

In this installment, an amount of Rs 51 crore had been released, confirmed an official from the state finance department.

Last week, the commission informed that a total of Rs 70 crore was due from the state government on account of BLO remuneration, since, as per protocol, it is the state government concerned which is supposed to bear the remuneration of the BLOs, who are basically state government employees.

The commission also informed last week that it had sent two consecutive communications to the state secretariat, Nabanna, for the release of funds under this head. Finally, on Monday, the state government released the first instalment of funds for BLO remuneration.

The BLOs involved in the ongoing SIR exercise are supposed to receive about Rs 14,000, while the BLO supervisors are supposed to receive Rs 18,000. Currently, 81,000 BLOs are engaged in the SIR exercise in the state.

The task of the BLOs, which started with the beginning of the SIR exercise on November 4, will end with the publication of the draft voters’ list on December 16. The role of the BLOs in the first stage involved the distribution of enumeration forms, the collection of duly filled forms, and uploading the same on the BLO app.

In the first phases, several BLOs have been cautioned after they were found distributing and collecting the forms from a particular place, asking the voters to come to that place instead of following the commission-prescribed norm of going to the voters’ doorstep for both collection and distribution of those forms.

In the first stage, there had been reports of suicides and deaths of the BLOs, allegedly because of the pressure of SIR-related workload.

–IANS

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