Representative image (PTI)

Hyderabad: Several residents of Hyderabad’s old city approached a booth-level officer (BLO) of the Election Commission on Tuesday for help in identifying their names in the 2002 voter list as part of the pre-SIR mapping exercise. He was surprised to see that instead of someone who knew the rule book, he was approached by a sanitation worker from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation who did not know how to map voters.

The matter came to light in Barkas under Chandrayangutta constituency when residents saw the name and contact number of a specified BLO on the Election Commission website and contacted them. “About 20 of us were waiting at Al-Qarmoshi Global School in Salalah, Barqas. When we talked to him we realized that he was not even aware of the role of BLO. It was only when I mentioned SIR mapping that he came to the spot,” said Syed Jalaluddin Zafar, an activist who was helping residents in the mapping process.“He couldn’t read or write in Telugu. He just gave the phone and asked us to enter the details in the online form,” Zafar said. The video of the episode recorded by Zafar has since gone viral on Instagram.Although there is no explicit rule prohibiting the appointment of sanitation workers as BLOs, the guidelines state that such roles are generally assigned to government or semi-government employees, such as teachers, Anganwadi workers, panchayat workers, clerks and bill collectors – individuals who are expected to have basic literacy skills and administrative experience.One of the sanitation workers appointed as BLO said that they were given smartphones for SIR work. He said, “Along with me, around 10 such workers have been deployed for the exercise. We were asked to open the portal on the phone and hand it over to the person, who entered their details in a form. If the name appeared, they put a tick. I attended a training session where we were promised payment.”The sanitation worker said he starts work at 5 am and continues SIR duty after finishing his shift at 2 pm. “I cannot read or write in Telugu or English. We were only told to tick if his name came up. It’s only been two days since we started this work,” he said.Chandrayangutta electoral registration officer V Surendra said the appointments have been made due to acute shortage of staff. “Many staff have retired, and the scale of the practice is large, so it is a stop-gap arrangement. In our area, we have three sanitation workers working as BLOs, but we ensured that the staff appointed are at least educated till Class 9 and have basic competencies. …They will be replaced soon.