A woman working as a booth-level officer in Mal block of West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri was found hanging outside her home on Wednesday morning, reported The Telegraph.

The family of Shanti Muni Ekka 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.

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

Ekka was given the responsibility to distribute the enumeration forms in the 101 booth in Rangamati gram panchayat. However, she could not speak, read or write Bangla, which made her work difficult, according to The Telegraph.

“Since the SIR exercise started she had to leave every morning at 7 am and could return only around the afternoon,” her husband, Sukhu Ekka, told reporters.

The family claimed that Shanti Muni Ekka had requested the joint block development officer of Mal block to relieve her as a booth-level officer, but she was told to continue, reported The Telegraph.

In a social media post, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she was “deeply shocked and saddened” by Ekka’s death.

She claimed that Ekka “took her own life under the unbearable pressure of the ongoing SIR work”.

The chief minister also claimed that 28 persons have 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 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, which she claimed was “unplanned”.

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

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.

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