A booth-level officer in Jaipur’s Hawa Mahal assembly segment has alleged that he is facing intense pressure to remove a large number of voters—mostly Muslims—from the electoral rolls, saying the stress has driven him to the edge of suicide.
Kirti Kumar, a government schoolteacher deputed as a BLO, said he was being compelled to delete close to 40 per cent of the voters in his booth from the draft rolls released after the Special Intensive Revision. He claimed the objections were aimed almost entirely at Muslim voters, despite the fact that he had already completed their verification.
In a video that has circulated widely online, Kumar is heard expressing extreme distress during a phone call, saying he would go to the collector’s office and end his life there. In the same clip, he appears to tell BJP councillor Suresh Saini that removing voters from the entire locality would make it easier for him and “Maharaj” to win the election.
The reference to “Maharaj” was understood to be BJP MLA Balmukund Acharya, who narrowly won the Muslim-majority Hawa Mahal seat in the 2023 Assembly polls. Acharya, also the chief priest of Jaipur’s Dakshinmukhiji Balaji Temple, has since been involved in multiple controversies over remarks and actions alleged to be directed against Muslims, Maktoob Media reported.
Kumar told Newslaundry that the SIR process had already disrupted his teaching responsibilities and affected his students, and that he was now being asked to deal with 470 objections within two days. He said completing the task would take at least 78 hours, followed by fresh field verification, effectively forcing him to repeat the entire exercise. He added that BLOs were already exhausted and were being threatened with suspension by BJP leaders, and that he had informed his seniors of his inability to comply.
In contrast, BLOs from at least five nearby booths with predominantly Hindu voters said they had received no objections. Another BLO from the area, Saraswati Meena, said objections had been raised against 158 voters in her booth, alleging that BJP agents had filed all of them and that Muslim voters were being selectively targeted. She said the voters had already been verified during the SIR and warned that election staff could not be subjected to such pressure.
The report also noted that at least three BLOs have died in Rajasthan in recent months, amid growing concerns over excessive workload and the way the SIR has been implemented, including technical glitches, insufficient training and unrealistic deadlines.
The episode has sparked serious concerns about alleged political interference in the electoral process, the targeting of minority voters, and the toll the ongoing revision of electoral rolls is taking on election staff.