Representative image showing a dead body.
Credit: iStock Photo
Kolkata: As another woman engaged as a Booth Level Officer for the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in West Bengal died by suicide, blaming the Election Commission for her death in a note, the state’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, slammed the poll panel, asking how many lives should be lost for the exercise.
“How many more lives will be lost? How many more need to die for this SIR? How many more dead bodies shall we see for this process?” Mamata wrote on X, after the body of Rinku Tarafdar, 52, a part-time teacher of a school engaged by the EC as a BLO for the SIR, was found hanging at her residence in Krishnanagar in West Bengal on Saturday. “This has become truly alarming now!!”
Tarafdar, according to police, left a suicide note, alleging: “The Election Commission is responsible for my fate”. “I want to live. My family lacks nothing. But, for this modest job, they pushed me to such humiliation that I was left with no choice but to die,” she alleged in the suicide note. “I cannot bear the inhuman workload. I am a part-time teacher, and my salary is very low compared to my effort, yet they will not relieve me. I had completed 95% of the offline work, but I was unable to manage the online tasks. Despite informing the BDO office and my supervisor, no action was taken.”
Mamata posted pictures of the suicide note left by Tarafdar, stating that she was “profoundly shocked” to know about the death of another BLO. She had written to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Thursday, asking him to halt the SIR of the electoral rolls in West Bengal immediately, as the credibility of the exercise came under question.
Tarafdar was the third BLO to die after the EC launched the SIR of the electoral rolls in West Bengal.
Earlier, the body of Shantimuni Ekka, 48, an anganwadi worker serving as the BLO for the SIR of the electoral rolls, was found hanging from a tree – with her scarf around her neck – near her home in the New Glencoe tea garden area in the Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal early on November 19. Her husband, Sukh Ekka, alleged that she could not take the “unbearable pressure” of the SIR-related works. She had visited the local block development officer’s office to seek relief, but her plea had been turned down, and the mounting stress pushed her to death by suicide. Namita Hansda, an Integrated Child Development Scheme worker, who was also engaged as a BLO in Purba Bardhaman district of the state, had died of a brain stroke. Her family, too, had alleged that increasing work pressure had led to her death.
Tarafdar, however, was the first to have allegedly left a suicide note, blaming the EC directly. Her death prompted the ruling TMC to reiterate its allegation that the EC had launched the SIR of electoral rolls in West Bengal to ensure advantage for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2026 state assembly polls. The party alleged that the EC had created a fear psychosis in the state with the revision of the electoral rolls, and at least 34 people had died due to anxiety since the process had been launched in the state.
A delegation of the TMC met the state’s Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal on Saturday and submitted a memorandum, expressing the party’s concerns over the exercise.
“The work that normally takes two years is being done in two months. The commission is trying to favour a political party. The names of 150 to 200 voters are being deliberately omitted at each booth. The commission's website is full of errors. These lapses are costing lives,” Arup Biswas, a senior TMC leader and a minister in the state government, said.
The CEO asked the District Election Officer of Nadia to send a report on the death of the BLO in Krishnanagar.
The BJP, however, dismissed the TMC’s allegation, with the saffron party’s state heavyweight and leader of the opposition in the assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, writing to the CEC on Friday, alleging that the chief minister was trying to “undermine” the commission and “shield an illicit vote-bank” her party has “nurtured for years”.
The BJP has long been accusing the TMC of winning elections by facilitating illegal migration from India’s eastern neighbour, Bangladesh, to West Bengal, and helping the infiltrators get citizenship documents and make their way into the electoral rolls.
The saffron party has been relying on the SIR to remove the illegal migrants from the electoral rolls and to defeat the TMC in the assembly elections next year.
The BJP claimed that a large number of illegal migrants had started crossing the India-Bangladesh border to return to the neighbouring country after the EC had launched the SIR in West Bengal, along with 11 other States and Union Territories.