Political Parties Show Mixed Response In Appointing BLAs

Mumbai: More than a week after the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Maharashtra, political parties have shown a mixed reaction on the appointment of Booth Level Representatives (BLAs). According to the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Maharashtra, there are 1,00,253 polling booths in the state, but most parties have appointed far fewer BLAs. BJP is ahead with 52,215 BLAs, followed by Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena (17,800), Congress (17,421), Sharad Pawar-led NCP (4,468) and Shiv Sena (UBT) (10,140). The state unit of ECI will start the voter list revision work from June 30.

BLAs are appointed by recognized political parties for each polling booth and work in coordination with Booth Level Officers (BLOs), who are representatives of the ECI at ground zero. BLAs, usually local party workers, help identify dead, switched or duplicate voters to ensure an accurate and clean voter roll.

Considering the chaos in the SIR of voter rolls in the states of West Bengal and Bihar ahead of the respective Assembly elections, the Maharashtra CEO office has been constantly requesting all political parties to appoint BLAs who can assist the BLOs in reaching out to voters. “We have written numerous letters requesting all political parties to appoint BLAs for SIR. Apart from us, we have also instructed all district collectors to press for appointment of BLAs in all polling stations in their districts,” said a senior official from the ECI state branch.

He also said that BLAs will help BLOs reach out to voters at the local level for SIR because voters know whether he is alive, missing or dead. “After the draft voter rolls for SIR are published in each polling booth, the BLOs will submit a list of deleted voters to the BLAs for approval. While giving the proposed voter deletion list, a photograph will be taken of the list being handed over by the BLOs to the BLAs so that they do not create any problems later on, as political parties did in Bihar and West Bengal,” the senior official said. If the BLAs raise objections and submit the relevant documents of the voters requested to be deleted, their name will be added to the voter list.

Sunetra Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party appointed 6,472 BLAs across the state, Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena appointed 3,848 BLAs, followed by Bahujan Samaj Party (193) and Aam Aadmi Party (57), officials said.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra CEO S Chockalingam informed that mapping of electoral rolls in Maharashtra has reached 72.04 per cent with 7 crore voters being mapped out of 9,86,44,413 voters. “Our BLOs will visit each house from June 30 to July 29 to check whether mapping has been done,” he said.

When asked whether additional time will be sought from the ECI upon the request of political parties, Mr. Chockaligam said that if there is any delay in the completion of the SIR for any reason, they will seek additional time from the ECI.