BLOs do the heavy lifting; group hearings to be conducted locality wise

Two booth-level officers, a man and a woman, sit at a community hall tucked away to a corner at a locality in Hayathnagar. The woman is busy on phone, pulling out papers from the bundles strewn before her, and calling the contact numbers written prominently on them.

“You have received a notice in your name. Please come and collect it,” she tells an elector who is expecting her to deliver the notice at his doorstep. “We cannot go from door to door. I have notices pertaining to the electors in the radius of three to four kilometres,” she says in explanation. A few electors arrive meanwhile, holding their Electoral Photo Identity Cards and the Enumeration Form copies that they had filled out last month. The BLO asks them to sit, saying “This could take a while.”

A bundle is given to the elector for him to search for and pull out the notices in his and his family members’ names. The BLO then tears the counterfoil, and makes the electors sign on it along with their mobile numbers, before handing them the notices. She takes a selfie with the electors holding the copies, and uploads it on the Election Commission of India’s mobile app. The electors are also made to sign a register in proof of receiving notices.

Then they are orally informed about the location of the hearing, which is at the ward office of the locality. Members of the same family got several different dates in all cases, and the location of the hearing is not mentioned on the notice copies.

“Please bring any of the 12 documents mentioned overleaf in the coming two days. We will upload them too, so that you can just attend the group hearing on the given date,” the male BLO tells the electors.

Group hearings are the workaround devised by the electoral officials in the city, in order to reduce crowds at the office of the Electoral Registration Officers, and to economise on time during the notice period of the Special Intensive Revision of the Electoral Rolls presently going on in the State. Officials of the rank of Assistant Electoral Registration Officers are said to chair the hearings at community halls/ward offices or any other centrally accessible locations where the electors will have to attend. A group photo will be taken as the proof of conducting the hearing, so even electors who had already given the documentary proof to the BLO will have to mark their attendance at the hearing.

Getting maximum extent of the job done by BLOs is being considered an efficient way to use the limited time and resources. However, BLOs are not happy about it. “It’s a lot of work. We are doing this in the morning, and returning to our regular jobs towards evening,” says a BLO who is a health worker.

While they were distributing forms of only one polling station during Enumeration Phase, it is not the same now. “Each BLO has to hand over 1,000 notices. If the notices in her area are fewer, then she is being given the notices of other polling stations too, which makes the door-to-door visits difficult. Hence, the BLOs are calling the electors to come and collect the notices, which makes their job easier,” informed an official pleading anonymity.

Notices are being issued to a total 92,87,577 electors across the State, of whom 34,47,342 are from the constituencies part of the city. “I felt sorry for the BLO. For each form, there are two to three signatures he/she has to take besides a photograph which they have to upload. The whole process is 15 to 20 minutes for each form — after locating the notice in his pile. I had to sit with him and browse through the notices which are not in any order,” said Ram Manohar Reddy, well-known economist and journalist who stays at Adarsh Nagar.