KOCHI: Over 21,000 booth level officers (BLO) would be deprived Onam celebrations this year, owing to the Election Commission’s (EC) October 10 deadline to authenticate and purify electoral rolls.
As per an EC directive, the BLOs have been entrusted with the task of National Electoral Roll Purification (NERP) programme, under which they have to issue notices to absent electors for deletion by October 10 and meet booth level agents by October 16.
While fixing the deadlines, the EC did not take into account celebrations for Onam, Kerala’s own festival, which is observed by government employees and public over a week.
“Normally in Onam, we used to go out for a picnic with family members. But with the EC’s order, that plan appears cancelled this year. We made a complaint to the department, but the authorities have not responded,” said a BLO, who is an Anganwadi worker. The officer did not wish to be quoted.It is, however, learnt that the Ernakulam district administration has moved the EC seeking holidays for BLOs after the latter’s complaint to the district administration.
EC launched the purification and authentication programme of National Electoral Roll in collaboration with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) under mission-mode project to authenticate, purify and link Aadhaar Card numbers of electors with the electoral rolls.
The exercise also aims at making electoral rolls free of errors and multiple entries, besides linking electors with mobile numbers and email address, to facilitate and ease OTP (One-Time Password)-based activities like correction of errors or change of address and sending mobile-based slips and other election-related information to voters periodically.“There are over 1,300 voters under each booth, whom we have to meet personally. Even if we work the entire day, we can collect data of maximum 50 voters daily,” said another BLO.
“Since this is a heavy task, the entire process will take nearly one month to complete. As a result, we have to cancel any Onam celebrations or plans,” the BLO added.
The unavailability of voters in their listed residences during holidays also poses a major headache for the BLOs, as it takes two to three tries to meet voters.
Meanwhile, many BLOs were reluctant to receive Form 4, which is used for collecting vital information of voters, from Taluk village officers.
Despite repeated attempts by the ‘Express’, the EC could not be reached for comments.