SC asks states to provide more staff to EC for SIR duty to ease pressure on BLOs

Amid allegations of deaths of several booth level officers (BLOs) engaged in Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls due to extreme work pressure, the Supreme Court on Thursday asked states to consider deputing additional employees to ease their work pressure.

"In case they (BLOs) are facing hardships, including being overburdened with their routine duties as well as the additional duties assigned by the Election Commission, the state government can obviate such hardships," a Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said after senior counsel Gopal Sankaranarayanan, representing actor Vijay's party TVK, said many of them committed suicide due to undue work pressure.

“If any employee has any "specific reason" for seeking exemption from the SIR duty, the competent officer of the state can consider such requests on a case-to-case basis and replace such an employee with another. However, it shall not be construed or understood as if they can withdraw the employees who have been assigned the duty if their substitutes are not provided," it said.

The Bench, however, said the states where SIR was under way, "shall be obligated to deploy the requisite workforce at the disposal of the Election Commission, though the strength of such employees can be increased as explained…"

No state has so far approached the court citing difficulties, the Bench noted.

On behalf of the poll panel, senior counsel Rakesh Dwivedi and Maninder Singh said more than 90 per cent of the enumeration forms had been supplied in Tamil Nadu and that criminal proceedings were initiated only when BLOs showed reluctance to perform their duties. There was an attempt to create a particular kind of political narrative, Dwivedi said.

Highlighting BLOs’ plight, TVK has sought a direction to the Election Commission not to take any coercive actions such as initiating criminal proceedings under the Representation of the People (RP) Act against BLOs for not performing the duty in a time-bound manner. It also sought ex-gratia compensation for the BLOs who died during the SIR exercise.

Sankaranarayanan submitted that some instructions needed to be issued by the Bench as many teachers or anganwadi workers working as BLOs died due to the extreme pressure exerted on them by EC officials who were also getting FIRs lodged against the BLOs, for failing to perform their duties.

The Bench disposed of the TVK petition, saying the issue of ex-gratia compensation for the BLOs could be revived later by aggrieved persons or the petitioner at a later stage.

The petitioners against SIR on Thursday told the Bench that electoral registration officers had no power to determine citizenship of a voter and the SIR exercise suffered from severe procedural lapses, lack of transparency and jurisdictional overreach regarding citizenship determination.

“It is very clear that it is not the job of the ERO to determine citizenship. All that they can do is to refer it to the authorities concerned if they feel that the citizenship of a person is doubtful,” advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing one of the petitioners, told the Bench which will resume the hearing on December 9.

On October 27, the Election Commission announced the conduct of the second phase of the SIR exercise in 12 states and Union territories between November 2025 and February 2026.

The 12 states and union territories where SIR exercise is being conducted are: Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala and West Bengal are scheduled to go to polls in 2026. In Assam, where polls are also due in 2026, SIR of the electoral rolls will be announced separately.