KOLKATA, Nov 19: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday tore into the Election Commission after a booth level officer in Jalpaiguri district was found hanging, alleging the “inhuman, unplanned” SIR workload is crushing field staff, even as the BLO’s family flagged “unbearable pressure” and the BJP blamed state officials for the tragedy.
The deceased, 48-year-old Shantimuni Orao, an anganwadi worker serving as the BLO for booth number 20/101 under Rangamati gram panchayat, was found hanging from a tree near her home in the New Glencoe tea garden area early in the morning. Her scarf was tied around her neck, police said.
Her family alleged she died by suicide after weeks of mounting stress caused by the SIR drive.
Police from Mal police station have recovered the body and sent it to Jalpaiguri Sadar Hospital for post-mortem examination. “An investigation has begun,” Superintendent of Police K U Ganpat said.
Banerjee, reacting strongly on X, said she was “deeply shocked and saddened” at yet another BLO death during the revision exercise. “Today again, we lost a Booth Level Officer in Mal, Jalpaiguri, an anganwadi worker who took her own life under the unbearable pressure of the ongoing SIR work,” she wrote.
Claiming that 28 people have died since the SIR process began, she alleged that a task earlier spread over three years was being forced into two months “to please political masters”, putting “inhuman pressure” on ground-level staff. “Such precious lives are being lost because of the unplanned, relentless workload imposed by the so-called Election Commission of India. A process that earlier took three years is now being forced into two months on the eve of elections to please political masters, putting inhuman pressure on BLOs,” she said.
She urged the ECI to immediately suspend the drive.
“I urge the ECI to act with conscience and immediately halt this unplanned drive before more lives are lost”, she said. (PTI)
