India's new suicide crisis: Poll workers take lives amid voter recount rush

"At least 33 election officials have died since the launch of the criticised revision of electoral rolls last month, many of them by suicide. Lucknow, India Harshit Verma believes his 50-year-old father, Vijay Kumar Verma, died because he was handling an inhuman task. Vijay, a contractual government teacher in Lucknow, the capital of India's Uttar Pradesh state, was hired as a booth-level officer (BLO) to conduct a revision of the voter list in his constituency, as part of an enormous electoral exercise involving millions of BLOs."

"The exercise, called the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), was launched by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on November 4, across 12 states and federally governed territories, to update the electoral rolls by adding eligible voters through house-to-house enumeration and removing ineligible people. The exercise will be repeated in the remaining states in phases. According to a handbook for BLOs on the ECI's website, their responsibilities range from doing house visits to identifying existing and dead voters, collecting their photos and other relevant documents,"

"The BLOs, who are mostly government teachers or junior officials, have complained of their immense work pressure. A single mistake means the entire process of filling out the forms and uploading them has to be done again. A report last week by the Spect Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank, said at least 33 BLOs have died across India since November 4, at least nine of whom took their own lives and left desperate accounts of their work pressure in their suicide notes."

The Election Commission of India launched the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) on November 4 to update electoral rolls across 12 states and federally governed territories through house-to-house enumeration. Booth-level officers (BLOs), largely contractual teachers and junior officials, must visit homes, identify existing and deceased voters, collect photos and documents, and upload records to a designated portal. BLOs report intense workloads and that a single mistake requires redoing forms and uploads. A Spect Foundation report found at least 33 BLOs have died since the exercise began, with at least nine suicides linked to work pressure. One BLO, Vijay Kumar Verma, collapsed while working late and later died of a brain haemorrhage.

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