A 51-year-old booth-level officer (BLO) from West Bengal’s Nadia district became the second BLO in the state to die by suicide within three days, intensifying concerns over the heavy workload and mounting pressure on government employees engaged in the Election Commission’s (EC) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

Rinku Tarafdar, a para-teacher from Krishnanagar, was found hanging at her home on Friday night. She left behind a two-page suicide note in Bengali, blaming the EC for “inhuman work pressure” and writing that she “wanted to live” but feared the “administrative fallout” of not completing her tasks.

“I do not support any political party. I am a very ordinary person. But I cannot handle this inhuman work pressure,” she wrote, adding that despite meagre pay she was never given a break from BLO duty.

The note mentions that although she had completed “95% of the offline work”, she struggled with “online uploading”, and said that informing her supervisor “yielded no results”.

Her family said she was distressed due to her lack of digital skills. “She distributed the forms on time but didn’t know how to upload them. This is not suicide, but murder by the EC,” her husband Ashim alleged.

On Wednesday, another BLO — a 48-year-old anganwadi worker from Jalpaiguri — was found hanging at her home. Her family said she too struggled with SIR-related digital procedures because she did not know Bengali.

Across the country, at least six BLO suicides have been reported from five states — West Bengal, Kerala, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.

Reacting to Rinku’s death, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee posted her suicide note on X, expressing “profound shock” and asking, “How many more lives will be lost?” Krishnanagar MP Mahua Moitra also shared a video reading out the note in Hindi and English.

The BJP condoled the death but questioned the authenticity of the note. Bengal BJP chief Samik Bhattacharya called for a probe, saying, “If any party thinks EC is working in connivance with another, they should go to the Supreme Court.”

BJP general secretary Agnimitra Paul said the state government must answer why it had not responded to the EC’s request to recruit 1,000 data entry operators, despite BLOs repeatedly saying they were unfamiliar with digital work.

Bengal chief electoral officer Manoj Agarwal said he has yet to receive reports from district authorities on the two deaths. “Once we get the report, we will send it to the EC,” he said.