Panaji, Nov 18 — Former President of the Goa Government Employees’ Association (GGEA), John Nazareth, has written to Chief Minister Pramod Sawant requesting the postponement of the upcoming Zilla Panchayat elections scheduled for December 13, 2025, citing an overwhelming workload faced by Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and volunteers engaged in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
In his letter, Nazareth noted that the Election Commission of India’s SIR exercise, currently underway across 12 states and Union Territories including Goa, began on November 4 and will continue till December 4, 2025, with the final electoral roll expected on February 7, 2026. He pointed out that the multi-stage revision process involves enumeration, draft roll publication, verification, adjudication of claims and objections, and the final roll publication.
Nazareth said that nearly 1,725 BLOs and an equal number of government-appointed volunteers are under severe pressure, working long hours to collect and verify voter details from the 2002 SIR list and upload them on the ECI system. He stated that less than 20 percent of the data has been uploaded so far, mainly due to network congestion and the requirement to upload form photocopies through the Election Commission app.
Claiming that the work burden has become extremely stressful, he cited the recent case of a BLO from Kerala who allegedly died by suicide due to SIR-related pressure. Nazareth urged the Goa government and the State Election Commission to view the incident as an eye-opener and avoid overburdening staff by conducting ZP elections concurrently with the revision exercise.
He wrote that the Government of Goa should immediately postpone the Zilla Parishad elections to a later date after completion of the SIR process, just as was done during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nazareth has also forwarded copies of the letter to the Chief Electoral Officer and the State Election Commissioner, and said that a separate representation is being sent to the Chief Election Commissioner of India.
