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Kerala BLO’s suicide not linked to SIR exercise: Kannur district official
Electoral Registration Officer and Kannur deputy collector Latha Devi said no adverse instructions had been issued to any BLO
NEW DELHI: There is no evidence to link the death of a school employee, working as a Booth Level Officer (BLO), to the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Kerala’s electoral roll, a senior Kannur district official said on Monday, amid a statewide protest by BLOs in the state.
The school employee, posted as a last-grade attendant at an upper primary school, was found dead at home on Sunday morning. His family had linked his suicide to stress over the distribution of enumeration forms for a booth of the Payyannur assembly seat. He had been designated as a BLO in July and had trained for the SIR exercise, which started on November 4.
His father told reporters on Sunday that his son was not familiar with the neighbourhood and had found it challenging to distribute forms and complete their scrutiny within the prescribed deadline. “He had gone to sleep at 2 am on Sunday and had been working until the early hours almost every day,” his father said. A local ward member added that he left halfway through Sunday morning mass, telling his wife he had pending work. He was later found dead at home.
The Peringome police station registered an unnatural death case, in this connection and said there were “no external injuries, no signs of struggle, and no suicide note.”
Kannur district collector K Vijayan, however, said in a statement that the BLO’s progress was in line with district and constituency averages.
Of the 1,065 forms allotted to him, 825 were recorded as distributed on the portal. A field-level verification on Sunday morning indicated only 50 forms remained to be delivered. He said the rest had been distributed but not updated digitally. Vijayan also said a Village Field Assistant was assigned to assist him on November 15.
There was no pressure or adverse instructions issued to any BLO, added Electoral Registration Officer and Kannur deputy collector Latha Devi.
Additional ERO, Vinod EV said that all communication with the BLO concerned had been routine. The Booth Level Supervisor, who contacted him around 8:45 a.m. on the day of the incident, reported that he said he would “complete the remaining work himself” and had not sought help, he stated.
Vijayan said no link had “so far been established between SIR duties and the death” and that administrative checks of phone records and official interactions hadn’t indicated any cause for work-related distress either.
To be sure, the police investigation in this case is still continuing.
A statement by the Action Council of State Government Employees and Teachers and the Teachers Service Organisation Protest Committee said they had been given targets, which were humanly impossible to achieve.
