MUMBAI: After the Mumbai City election officer expressed concern about the slow progress of work on the pre-Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the state’s electoral rolls because of several teachers and BMC employees appointed as booth-level officers (BLOs) not reporting for duty, Mumbai City election officer Ashwini Joshi on Friday sent a letter to the assistant commissioner of police (Law and Order).
Joshi, who is also the BMC’s additional municipal commissioner, states in the letter that the BMC authorities have repeatedly contacted the employees through phone calls and messages and have also informed the concerned department heads on several occasions. Despite this, many employees have failed to join duty, resulting in delays in preparatory work related to the voter list revision programme.
The election office on its part has instructed police stations to take action against erring employees. However, school and college authorities have pointed out the unfairness of this, given the timing of the assignment—the imminent new academic year and some teachers also being called for census duty has them already burdened with work.
Under the SIR exercise in Maharashtra, which began in February, government departments were instructed to appoint eligible Class C employees as BLOs and send them for registration to the offices of the district collector and additional district election officers in the Mumbai city and Mumbai suburban districts. The election office had warned that the work must be completed within the prescribed schedule. It has now asked the concerned electoral registration officer to lodge a complaint with the local police station if an employee does not report to the assigned office. Senior police inspectors have also been asked to take appropriate action against employees who fail to comply with the orders.
Following the communication from the election office, some police stations have written to schools and colleges demanding immediate compliance. In one such letter sent to a college in the eastern suburbs, the college was directed to instruct the concerned teachers and staff members to report for the SIR work without delay. However, a principal pointed out that many institutions were currently busy with the admission process for the new academic year and some teachers had also been assigned census-related duties, making it difficult for them to take up additional election work immediately.
