Across India, an institutional tragedy is unfolding quietly, buried beneath official press notes and hollow claims of electoral reform. The Election Commission&rsquo;s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, reportedly launched to ensure that illegal migrants do not get voting rights, is today pushing booth-level officers to death. The irony is devastating: the system responsible for protecting democracy is killing the very people who sustain it.
This week, two booth-level officers died by suicide under the crushing burden of SIR workload &mdash; Arvind, a teacher from Devli village in Gujarat&rsquo;s Gir Somnath, and Shanti Mani, a BLO from Jalpaiguri, Bengal. Their deaths are not isolated incidents; they are symptoms of a collapsing structure. In just one week, three suicides linked to SIR have been reported, the earlier ones from Rajasthan and another state. One week. Three deaths. One merciless system.
Arvind, entrusted with SIR responsibilities on top of regular teaching duties, was drowning in relentless documentation, digital uploads, verification rounds and constant pressure. His family found a suicide note &mdash; a tragic testimony to a life crushed under bureaucratic brutality. He reportedly suffered from sleeplessness, panic and fear of disciplinary action.
The story repeats in Bengal. Shanti Mani, overburdened and struggling with linguistic and procedural challenges, collapsed under inhumane workload, no support, and constant fear of errors. Her family says she was pushed beyond breaking point.
Behind every death runs a common spine-chilling truth:
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The system demands perfection without providing manpower, training, or mental-health support. It punishes instead of supporting. It extracts instead of enabling.
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Meanwhile, BLOs across India are openly challenging top officials, daring them to personally undertake SIR fieldwork to understand the inhumanity and frustration of the process. They ask a legitimate question:
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Can any IAS, IPS or Election Commission officer complete these tasks under such impossible deadlines?
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Instead of reform, frontline workers face late-night calls, intimidation, threats of suspension, unattainable numeric targets, and public humiliation.
And here lies the darkest allegation &mdash; whispered widely but never acknowledged publicly &mdash;
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Is the SIR exercise being weaponised to benefit the party in power? Is this truly about electoral purity, or about voter-list engineering and demographic manipulation ahead of elections?
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If so, the cost is blood. Arvind. Shanti Mani. Three others in a week. Different states, one pattern. Different lives, same sacrifice to a machinery without conscience.
India must ask:
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Who is accountable when BLOs die?
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Who answers for stolen lives &mdash; the Election Commission, district collectors, or a political regime shielding itself with patriotism while destroying its own citizens?
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This is no longer administrative failure. It is a moral collapse.
Democracy cannot be defended by dead teachers and broken public servants.
If these deaths do not force reform, what will? If this system does not change now, more coffins will follow. And when the next BLO dies, silence will be complicity.

Suicides of BLOs expose brutal workload, moral collapse and political motives behind SIR

SIR Revision or Systematic Human Destruction?

Suicides of BLOs expose brutal workload, moral collapse and political motives behind SIR

November 21, 2025 | 21:11 IST