A woman working as a booth-level officer was found hanging in her home in Krishnanagar in West Bengal’s Nadia district on Saturday morning, PTI reported.

An unidentified police officer told the news agency that the family of Rinku Tarafdar alleged that she had been under immense pressure due to her workload for the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the state.

“We have recovered a note from her room,” the officer said, adding that an investigation was underway.

West Bengal is among 12 states and Union Territories where the Election Commission began the enumeration phase of the exercise on November 4.

Four suspected suicides have been reported in the country during the special intensive revision of voter rolls.

In a social media post, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that she was shocked over yet another alleged suicide of a booth-level officer in Krishnanagar.

‘‘…Rinku Tarafdar, has blamed ECI in her suicide note…before committing suicide at her residence today,” the Trinamool Congress chief claimed. “How many more lives will be lost? How many more need to die for this SIR? How many more dead bodies shall we see for this process?”

Banerjee also attached a copy of the alleged suicide note in her post.

The death on Saturday came two days after another booth-level officer, Shanti Muni Ekka from Mal block in Jalpaiguri district, was found hanging outside her home on Wednesday morning.

Ekka’s family had also alleged that she was overworked due to door-to-door visits she had to make for the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the state.

At the time, the chief minister claimed that 28 persons had died since the announcement of the voter roll revision in the state, “some due to fear and uncertainty, others due to stress and overload”.

“Such precious lives are being lost because of the unplanned, relentless workload imposed by the so-called Election Commission of India,” Banerjee had said. “A process that earlier took 3 years is now being forced into 2 months on the eve of elections to please political masters, putting inhuman pressure on BLOs.”

She urged the Election Commission “to act with conscience” and halt the process to revise the electoral rolls.

On Thursday, Banerjee once again urged the poll panel to suspend the revision of the electoral rolls in the state, saying “the human cost of this mismanagement is now unbearable”.

In addition to West Bengal, Kerala and Rajasthan, the voter rolls are also being revised in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Puducherry, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep.

Assembly polls are expected to take place in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry in the first half of 2026.

The task of preparing voter lists before elections is typically assigned to primary school teachers and anganwadi or health care workers, who are employed by state governments. They are required to go door-to-door and check the identities of new voters and verify the details of those who have died or permanently moved out of an area.

In the commission’s parlance, they are called booth-level officers. Each booth-level officer is responsible for maintaining the voter list for one polling booth, which can sometimes have as many as 1,500 registered voters.

The draft electoral rolls for the 12 states and Union Territories will be published on December 9. Voters can file claims and objections from December 9 to January 8, while hearings and verifications will take place from December 9 to January 31. The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 7.

Several petitions have been filed before the Supreme Court against the exercise over concerns that the special intensive revision of voter rolls could disenfranchise eligible voters.

The voter list revision in Bihar was announced by the poll panel in June and completed ahead of the Assembly elections in November. In the final electoral roll published on September 30, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded.

BLO death in Gujarat

In Gujarat, schoolteacher Arvind Vadher, who had been deployed as a booth-level officer, died allegedly by suicide at his home in Devli village of Gir Somnath district’s Kodinar taluka on Friday, PTI reported.

His family claimed that he had left a note citing mental stress and exhaustion from voter roll revision work.

Gir Somnath Collector and District Election Officer NV Upadhyay told the news agency that an investigation was underway.

On November 16, two booth-level officers in Kerala and Rajasthan died by suicide because of alleged work pressure linked to the revision of voter rolls.

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