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

Five booth-level officers in Navi Mumbai have been suspended after 3,404 Special Intensive Revision forms from the Panvel assembly constituency were found at a private photocopy shop in Kharghar.

Raigad district collector Kishan Jawale said the documents were original Election Department forms. They carried voters' photographs, personal details filled in the prescribed columns, and the signatures of the BLOs responsible for those booths. The forms belonged to 11 polling stations in constituency 188. Most copies came from five stations. Six other stations appeared as single copies. Eleven of the sheets were blank.

The discovery was not an audit find. On Thursday, Balesh Bhojane, a Shiv Sena (UBT) office-bearer, and an advocate working with the party saw bundles of the forms at a xerox centre next to Ramsheth Thakur Public School in Sector 19. They alerted the electoral registration officer. Assistant EROs went to the shop and found Suraj Patil holding the stack and getting it copied. Patil is described by police as a nodal member of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha. He later left Kharghar police station, which kept officers busy through the night before the papers were secured.

Jawale said a case has been registered against Patil under Section 314 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which covers dishonestly converting movable property for one's own use, and Section 128 of the Representation of the People Act, which deals with the secrecy of the electoral process. The complaint was filed by Sunil Kisan Jadhav, nayab tehsildar of Panvel, at Kharghar police station. The Panvel City Municipal Corporation commissioner, Mangesh Chitale, suspended the five BLOs pending disciplinary action. Three of them were data-entry operators from Saunik Integrated & Security Pvt Ltd, a Bhayandar firm hired by the civic body to supply booth staff.

BJP leaders in Panvel denied any party role. Mayor Nitin Patil said party workers had no connection with the matter. Shiv Sena (UBT) workers used the find to argue that voter data from the SIR drive had left official custody and reached a political worker. The two sides clashed at the shop and later at the police station.

SIR forms are not campaign flyers. They are the working papers of a roll revision. They list who lives where, with a photograph and an official signature. Once those sheets leave the BLO's bag and land on a commercial copier, every name on them is available to whoever paid for the xerox. That is why the collector treated the pile as a custody failure and not a paperwork lapse.

The legal questions now split in two. The first is how original signed forms from 11 booths reached Patil. The second is what he intended to do with 3,404 copies. Section 314 needs a conversion for personal use. Section 128 needs a breach of secrecy. Prosecutors will have to show both. The five suspended BLOs will have to show how the forms left their control.

Maharashtra is in the middle of a Special Intensive Revision. Opposition parties have spent weeks saying the exercise is a chance to alter rolls. This case gives them a stack of paper with stamps on it. The Election Commission now has a local test: whether a private photocopy of official enumeration forms is treated as an administrative error or as an offence that changes how SIR is run in the rest of the state.