A woman working as a Booth Level Officer (BLO) was found dead in West Bengal's Nadia on Saturday, with her family claiming that she was under tremendous work stress due to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
54-year-old Rinku Tarafdar, a teacher at Bangali Swami Vivekananda School, was found hanging in her room at her Krishnanagar residence. A note recovered from the room read, "If I cannot do the BLO work, administrative pressure will come. It is not possible for me to take it."
Tarafdar's brother-in-law told NDTV that she was under mental pressure ever since she was given the BLO duty. "She never shared the kind of pressure she was in. But we were told she wanted to leave her job," he said.
On Wednesday, a booth-level officer in Jalpaiguri district was found hanging, with her family claiming that "unbearable SIR work pressure" was responsible for her death.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has urged Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to halt the ongoing SIR in Bengal. On Thursday, she wrote to the CEC, asserting that the continuous "unplanned and coercive drive" would endanger more lives and also jeopardise the legitimacy of the exercise.
"28 people have already lost their lives since SIR began - some due to fear and uncertainty, others due to stress and overload," Banerjee wrote in a post on X.
| Helplines | |
|---|---|
| Vandrevala Foundation for Mental Health | 9999666555 or help@vandrevalafoundation.com |
| TISS iCall | 022-25521111 (Monday-Saturday: 8 am to 10 pm) |
| (If you need support or know someone who does, please reach out to your nearest mental health specialist.) | |
