Five BLOs suspended after 3,404 SIR forms turn up in a Kharghar photocopy shop

Raigad district officials suspended five booth-level officers on Friday after 3,404 Special Intensive Revision forms from the Panvel Assembly constituency were found at a private photocopy shop in Sector 19, Kharghar. Collector Kishan Jawale said the papers were original enumeration forms. They carried voter photographs, personal details and official BLO signatures. An FIR was registered against Suraj Patil under the Representation of the People Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

The forms covered 11 polling stations, most of them from five booths. Eleven of the sheets were blank. The shop sits next to Ramsheth Thakur Public School. Shiv Sena (UBT) workers said they confronted Patil, whom they described as a Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha office-bearer, while he was getting the bundle copied on Thursday evening. A video of the confrontation circulated the same night. Patil later left Kharghar police station, producing what local reporters called a night of confusion before he was questioned.

Who the five officers are

Panvel City Municipal Corporation commissioner Mangesh Chitale issued the suspensions pending disciplinary proceedings. Three of the five were data-entry operators employed through Saunik Integrated & Security Pvt Ltd of Bhayandar and assigned as BLOs. Officials named Sulochana Mane, Prashant Mhatre and Rahul Bhagat among them. A two-member inquiry, led by deputy municipal commissioner Nanasaheb Kamathe and an assistant electoral registration officer, has been asked to reconstruct how filled forms left official custody.

Jawale said the Electoral Registration Officer sent assistant officers to the shop after a complaint that SIR applications were being photocopied. They found Patil with the bundle. Prasad Bhoir of Shiv Sena (UBT) said his party had already written to the Panvel sub-divisional officer about lapses in the revision. Sena (UBT) and BJP workers scuffled at the scene. Panvel mayor Nitin Patil, a BJP leader, said party workers had no link to the copying. A BJP leader from Panvel repeated that line.

What the forms contain, and why that matters

SIR enumeration sheets are not public leaflets. They are the working record of who is on the roll, who has moved, and who needs to be checked. Photographs, addresses and BLO signatures on a shop counter are a secrecy failure under Section 128 of the Representation of the People Act and, in the FIR, Section 314 of the BNS. The legal question is unauthorised possession and conversion for personal use. The political question is whether a party worker can walk out of a booth office with 11 stations' worth of paper.

Maharashtra is in the middle of a nationwide intensive revision. Opposition parties have spent weeks arguing that the process is leaky and partisan. A single shop in Kharghar does not prove a statewide design. It does prove that 3,404 original forms left official hands and reached a commercial copier. That is a chain-of-custody break, recorded by the collector, with five officers already off the job.

What the inquiry has to answer

The committee needs to say who signed the forms out, whether Patil was a designated party agent for those booths, and whether any data from the sheets was stored on phones or drives before the seizure. It also needs to say whether the three contract BLOs were trained on custody rules or simply handed a bag of paper. Until those answers are written, the FIR against Patil and the five suspensions are the only completed acts.

Jawale visited the office of Panvel Sub-Divisional Officer Pawan Chandak after the seizure. That visit is the administration telling its own staff the file will not be treated as a local quarrel. The next public document should be the inquiry report, or a charge sheet that names how the forms moved from booth to shop.