Rivers rising, BLOs in Punjab’s border areas take boats to meet SIR deadline

6 min readChandigarhJul 25, 2026 04:30 AM IST BLOs Pushpa Grover and Darshan Singh cross the Sutlej on a boat to reach Kaluwala village in Punjab’s Ferozepur district. (Express photo) For most Booth Level Officers (BLOs), revising electoral rolls means walking from one house to another with forms in hand. For some in Punjab’s remote border belt, it has meant rowing across rivers, waiting out floodwaters and, on occasion, relying on Army boats to return home. As the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls gathers pace, BLOs posted in some of Punjab’s most inaccessible villages have been navigating swollen rivers and flood-prone terrain to ensure that even the state’s last voters, living on the edge of the India-Pakistan border, are not left out.In Gurdaspur district, Vikram Sing