Overview
- West Bengal para‑teacher Rinku Tarafdar was found hanging in Nadia, with police recovering a note that blamed the Election Commission for “inhuman workload,” and the state CEO sought a report as a probe and postmortem proceed.
- Trinamool Congress demanded the SIR be halted, shared the suicide note publicly, and claimed roughly 31–34 deaths in recent weeks, alleging a compressed timeline, inadequate training, portal errors, and wrongful deletions.
- BJP leaders disputed TMC assertions, questioned the notes’ authenticity, called for independent investigation, and blamed the state for failing to appoint data‑entry operators, while alleging pressure on BLOs to admit ineligible voters.
- Similar incidents were reported outside Bengal, including a Gujarat teacher who left a note citing SIR‑related stress, another Gujarat death attributed by family to workload, and cases in Rajasthan, Kerala, and Madhya Pradesh under local inquiry.
- A West Bengal BLO association sought higher compensation than the state’s ₹2 lakh offer and operational fixes such as restoring the edit function in the BLO app, better server performance, and proper training, with digitisation at about 41% toward a December 4 deadline.