SIR 2025: All you need to know before BLOs come at your doorstep | A complete guide

Who are BLOs?

BLO or a booth-level officer is a representative of the Election Commission of India (ECI) at the grass-root level. They are local government/semi-government officials who are familiar with the local electors and enrolled as voters in the same polling area. Teachers, Anganwadi workers, Panchayat Secretary, Village Level Workers, Electricity Bill Readers, etc are mainly appointed as BLOs.

They play a significant role in the process of roll revision and collecting actual field information with regard to the roll corresponding to the polling area assigned to them. They are expected to maintain accuracy and fidelity of the electoral roll at the polling booth level. The major task in the revision of the SIR falls on these BLOs.

However, they are not full-time electoral officials.

What are the role and duties of BLOs during SIR?

One of the key roles of BLOs during SIR is the preparation of an error-free electoral roll. It is the BLOs who are revising the electoral roll, which is being called the Special Intensive Revision. they have the responsibility of including all the eligible voters in the list and deleting the duplication of voters by following the guidelines provided by the ECI.

What documents will be required during a BLO visit?

A BLO would hand you over two sets of enumeration forms for every voter in your family. You would need to fill them up in duplicate and sign them. Your BLO would countersign both forms. The officer would then retain one form for the ECI and hand you back the second with a stamped acknowledgement, which you may need for future reference.

Furthermore, You need to have your current EPIC (Electoral Photo Identity or Voter Card), Aadhar Card, two current passport-size photos and the 2002 electoral roll reference, if your or your parents’ or grandparents’ names feature in that list. You can access the 2002 roll from: https://ceowestbengal.com/ and do not need to attach copies of any of your documents along with the forms, according to PTI.

If the names don’t feature the SIR 2002 list, then you will be issued a notice at a later date to produce your citizenship credentials as per the list of 11 indicative documents named by the ECI and have your name enlisted in the final electoral roll, which will be published next year, post the completion of the SIR exercise.

What is SIR electoral roll?

Under Section 21(3) of The Representation of the People Act, 1950, the ECI “may at any time… direct a special revision of the electoral roll for any constituency or part of a constituency in such manner as it may think fit”.

The Registration of Electors’ Rules, 1960, says the revision of rolls can be carried out “either intensively or summarily or partly intensively and partly summarily, as the [ECI] may direct”. In an intensive revision, the electoral roll is prepared afresh; in a summary revision, the roll is amended.

The exercise is carried out when the ECI concludes that the current rolls need to be completely rebuilt or are erroneous. This usually happens prior to significant elections or following administrative procedures like constituency delimitation.