Kerala BLO involved in SIR ends life allegedly due to work stress

Thiruvananthapuram: A booth level officer involved in Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in Kerala reportedly ended life by suicide owing to work pressure.

Aneesh George, 41, who was working as a peon at a school, was found dead at his house near Payyannur in Kannur district on Sunday.

His relatives said that he was facing pressure related to SIR enumeration job.

The issue is snowballing into a political row  with the CPM and Congress stepping up their demand to postpone the SIR procedure at least till the local body elections are over.

However, election commission officials clarified that BLOs involved in SIR jobs were exempted from local body election related jobs and hence there was no additional work load owing to SIR enrollment.

George was found hanging in his house on Sunday forenoon. Other family members had gone to church. George was involved in SIR enrolment work and hence he couldn't go to church.

George leaves behind parents, wife and three children.

His father George Tharayil said that George was quite tense owing to SIR job. He seems to have ended life owing to that only as there was no other reason for him to take extreme steps.

His relatives said that he used to work till late in the night to finish the enumeration work. He also used to say that even his existing job could be affected in case of any lapse. Many houses were remaining closed and many people used to express their concerns over the SIR process. He was also learnt to be under compulsion to speed up the enrolment, especially since Kerala was reportedly quite lagging behind compared to other states.  

Local Congress activists said that George used to seek the help of Congress booth level agents for locating some households for enumeration works as he was not familiar with all households of the locality. Other political party workers used to threaten George over it. 

CPM leader M V Jayarajan said that there was pressure on BLOs to distribute the enumeration forms to all households before Nov 15. This had put him under stress.

Chief electoral officer Rathan U Kelkar said that a report was sought from the Kannur district collector on  the incident. He also said that so far there were no reports of any pressure from BLOs.

There were unconfirmed reports that George had already complained to the district collector about the job stress.

Till Saturday enumeration forms were distributed to over 2.51 crore voters in Kerala, which is 90 percent of the total electorates.