Hyderabad: With most Booth Level Officers (BLOs) not receiving enumeration forms until 3 pm on the first day of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the distribution process moved at a snail’s pace in the Old City on Thursday.In fact, some BLOs said the exercise could face further delays, with Muharram on Friday, followed by the National Pulse Polio Immunization Drive from June 27 to July 1. All ASHA workers, many of whom are also BLOs, have been assigned the responsibility of administering polio drops in their areas, while anganwadi teachers have been tasked with conducting door-to-door campaigns from June 29 to July 1 to ensure that all children below the age of five receive oral polio drops.“We have no clarity. Every department says its work is important. During our SIR training sessions, we were told to keep everything else aside and complete this exercise. The same happens with polio, the census, and other assignments. We really don’t know what the priority is right now,” said an ASHA worker who is also serving as a BLO in the Rajendranagar circle.She said she has to distribute more than 1,300 forms within seven days. “I don’t know how I will complete the task, given that four days will be taken up by the polio programme,” she added.After completing the distribution of forms, BLOs will have another week to collect them. This effectively leaves them with 15 days to conduct revisits, identify deceased and shifted voters, and complete other SIR-related work.“By the time we received the forms, it was already late, so we could not distribute them on Thursday. Now the process will begin only on Saturday,” a BLO from the Charminar circle said.Syed Jalaluddin, an activist who is helping locals with SIR process, said that BLOs should leave all other works and concentrate only on SIR for next one month so that not even a single eligible vote is deletedThe BLOs also complained that the forms in the bundles provided at the ward offices were not arranged in serial order, which would require additional time to organise before distribution could begin.For the SIR exercise, BLOs were given two identical forms for each voter under their jurisdiction. Before handing over a form, they must scan the QR code on it using the designated app so that the distribution can be tracked by higher authorities.
