As the State is heading towards the Assembly elections next year and special drives are being held to enrol new voters, a study has found that reaching booth-level officers (BLOs) is not as easy as it is made out to be in Bengaluru. BLOs are tasked with collecting data on voters, verifying their claims and requests, and enrolling them.
A national report, ‘Voter list management: Booth level officer and landscaping study’, released by Janaagraha on Wednesday, has found that only one in five BLOs could be contacted in the city as against the national average of one in four. However, cities such as Mumbai (one in 16) and Ahmedabad (one in 11), which goes to polls in a couple of days, fared even worse.
The report, which attempts to assess the effectiveness of BLOs, investigates how well they are working and identify leakages that may affect the quality of voter lists. To do this, it has reviewed the website of the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, job profiles of the BLOs, the time they have spent as BLOs, training they have received, payment issues, and level of satisfaction. The study has been conducted in 21 cities with a sample size of over 1,000 BLO respondents.
According to the report, while 57% of BLOs hold full-time jobs as teachers nationally, in Bengaluru 41% worked as teachers. The city has a higher percentage of experienced BLOs than the national average (62% in Bengaluru have been BLOs for over five years, against the average of 52%).
BLOs in the city are also better trained, with 96% having received training more than once in the last year. The national average is 92%.
Payment woes
The report has found a big gap in the process of payment of honorariums to BLOs in the city, which is one of the major issues faced by the officers. According to the report, Hyderabad had the largest proportion of BLOs who had not received honorarium last year (55%), closely followed by Bengaluru (53%) and Kolkata (45%).
Of the percentage of BLOs who have never received any payment, the number is higher for Bengaluru compared with the national average (11% in Bengaluru against the average of 9%). The average honorarium received by a BLO in the city was ₹3,714, which is only 62% of the ₹6,000 they are supposed to receive. The average amount paid to BLOs across the 21 cities was found to be ₹3,834.
Certain changes can be adopted to streamline the voter list management machinery, said Vivek Anandan Nair, associate manager — Advocacy and Reforms, Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy. “The incentive system for BLOs is very poor. Many who were interviewed did not even know they were supposed to get honorarium. The system should be amended to reflect that of direct benefit transfers, which can be easily enabled using Aadhaar,” he said.
With most of the BLOs working outside their normal working hours, the chances of them feeling stressed is very high. The report suggests that many of their tasks such as data crunching, comparisons with Census data, among others, can be technology enabled. Citizens, too, should be made aware of the role of the BLO and who their officer is and where to source their information from, Mr. Nair added.
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Key findings of the survey
How easy is it for citizens to contact BLOs?
National average: 1 in 4 could be reached
Bengaluru: 1 in 5 could be reached
Job profile of BLOs
57% are teachers among 21 cities
41% are teachers in Bengaluru
Experience as BLO
52% have been BLOs for over five years nationally
Bengaluru: 62% have over 5 years of experience
How many received training in last one year
National average: 92%
Bengaluru: 96%
How many received honorarium
National average:
9% never received any money
32% did not receive money in the last 1 year
Bengaluru:
11% never received any money
53% did not receive money in the last 1 year
How satisfied are BLOs
National average: 77.4% satisfied
Bengaluru: 78.3% satisfied
