HYDERABAD: A number of residents of Hyderabad’s outdated metropolis Tuesday contacted a booth-level officer (BLO) of the Election Fee to assist them establish their names on the 2002 electoral rolls as a part of the pre-SIR mapping train. To their shock, as an alternative of somebody who knew the rulebook, they have been approached by a sanitation employee of the Higher Hyderabad Municipal Company who had no thought easy methods to map voters.
The problem got here to mild in Barkas, beneath Chandrayangutta constituency, when residents seen the title and speak to variety of an assigned BLO on the EC web site and reached out. “About 20 of us have been ready at Al-Qurmoshi World Faculty in Salala, Barkas. As we spoke to him, we realized he didn’t even know the position of a BLO. It was solely after I talked about SIR mapping that he got here to the situation,” mentioned Syed Jallaluddin Zafar, an activist who was serving to residents with the mapping course of.“He couldn’t learn or write in Telugu. He merely handed over the telephone and requested us to enter the main points into a web based kind,” Zafar mentioned. The video of the episode recorded by Zafar has since gone viral on X.Though there is no such thing as a express rule prohibiting sanitation staff from being appointed as BLOs, the rules state that such roles are usually assigned to govt or semi-govt employees, comparable to academics, anganwadi staff, panchayat employees, clerks and invoice collectors – people anticipated to have fundamental literacy expertise and administrative expertise.One of many sanitation staff appointed as a BLO mentioned that they had been given smartphones for SIR work. “Together with me, round 10 such staff have been deployed for the train. We have been requested to open the portal on the telephone and hand it to the individual, who then entered his or her particulars right into a kind. If the title seems, they put a tick. I attended a coaching session the place we have been promised fee,” he mentioned.The sanitation employee mentioned he begins work at 5am and continues the SIR obligation after ending his shift at 2pm. “I can not learn or write in Telugu or English. We have been solely informed to place a tick if their title appeared. It has solely been two days since we began this work,” he mentioned.Chandrayangutta electoral registration officer V Surender mentioned the appointments had been made as a result of an acute scarcity of employees. “Many personnel have retired, and the dimensions of the train is massive, so it is a stop-gap association. In our space, we now have three sweepers working as BLOs, however we ensured the appointees had studied a minimum of as much as Class 9 and had fundamental proficiency. …They are going to be changed quickly.