Jaipur, Nov. 23 -- More than 500 booth level officers (BLOs) in Rajasthan have completed their house-to-house surveys for the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of the voters' lists, much ahead of the deadline on December 4, and are now helping BLOs in other regions of the state with their work, said an official from the state election department. After the exercise started on November 4, these BLOs crossed miles on foot, braving adverse weather in a challenging landscape in the remote desert areas, and patchy internet to complete the exercise. Hukum Chand (40) is a BLO in part 87 in Bikaner's Nokha that comprises 534 voters spread across over 150 hamlets. With no available transports or concrete roads, he and his two assistants used to walk more than 10 km daily to get the job done."They (voters) are mainly farmers with minimum educational qualifications. Most are not even aware about the SIR process and the required documents. Reaching 534 people in a month was not easy; their houses are not located closely - hamlets are about 10 to 15 km away from each other - and I could only walk to them," said Chand. A physical education teacher in a government primary school in Bikaner road, Chand was appointed as the BLO for the area in 2020. "I used to start my work at 9 am and return after meeting the daily target by 8 pm. My target was to cover 10 to 15 hamlets every day. I asked one of my two assistants to fill up the form details during the visit while another used to communicate with the villagers in the local language of Marwar to get information and documents. I originally belong to Tonk. Without their help, it was impossible for me to finish this job so soon," he added. Following his tremendous effort, the state election department on Monday awarded him, along with 77 other BLOs, for their outstanding performance that made significant contributions to expedite the SIR survey in Rajasthan. Chand is now working with his fellow BLOs in other areas who could not finish their job yet.At Mohangarh in Jaisalmer, 30-year-old BLO Karnail Singh was assigned to cover 109 hamlets. "I found only 170 voters there but some of their houses were even 80 to 90 km away in a vast desert. There was no transport facility, even the two-wheelers were unable to ply after a certain point," said Singh, a native of Sriganganagar, who was appointed as the area's BLO in 2023 after securing a job in a school in Jaisalmer in 2022. Singh would either walk or ride on camels to reach houses. "I used to start at 6 am and return home only by 9-10 pm after finishing my work. Often, I would also stay back in some villages if I needed to visit some houses, which were located at the farthest corners, the next day," he said. Near the border areas, mobile networks were also unavailable, posing a challenge for Singh to upload the documents or reaching out to other BLOs to coordinate with them. "Most villagers belonged to a pastoral community; they frequently migrated from one address to another, with several of them also moving to a different district," he said. "As they don't have any permanent address, I needed to communicate with the BLOs in their previous locations for mapping. But due to the unstable mobile internet network, uploading the documents and photos were also not possible. Therefore, I used to do it from a different place daily," the 30-year-old BLO said....