How the BLO App Turned SIR Into an Impossible Task

December 13, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

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Hello,

Picture this: You finish teaching primary school at 5 PM. By 6 PM, you're staring at a government app that's supposed to help you digitise voter rolls. Instead, it crashes. The data you spent hours entering? Gone. There is no autosave. You start again. The server goes down at peak hours. You work until 1 AM. Tomorrow, you're back in the classroom.

This was the reality for thousands of Booth Level Officers (BLO) across India during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. 

Read on.

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A WhatsApp scam has been circulating APK files named like “RTO E-Challan.apk” or “MParivahan.apk.” They look official but carry malware that can steal data, hijack WhatsApp and spread itself by forwarding to your contacts. 

Fraudsters send a message that looks like an official RTO challan notice or ‘mParivahan’ with an APK attachment. You receive this message (often from a number you don’t know). As soon as you click to download and install the file, it installs malware on Android devices. 

Once installed, the malware runs with device permissions and can read data, send messages, and change settings. The malicious app can exfiltrate sensitive data, harvest your banking information, take control of WhatsApp and auto-forward the same malicious file to your contacts. Because the message may be forwarded by people you know (whose accounts are already compromised), it looks more trustworthy and spreads quickly.

Immediate steps if you clicked or installed 

  • Disconnect from the internet (turn off Wi-Fi & mobile data) to limit the malware’s activity.

  • Uninstall the app via phone settings (if possible) and run a full antivirus/antimalware scan. Change passwords for sensitive accounts (email, banking) from a clean device. 

  • Report and block the sender on WhatsApp, and warn contacts if your account begins sending the file. 

  • If you come across a suspicious order notification or message, don’t panic. Send it to BOOM’s Tipline (7700906588) and we’ll verify it for you.

DECODE

No Autosave, AI Mismatch: The BLO App That Turned SIR Into An Impossible Task

Teachers, anganwadi workers, and irrigation staff were handed smartphones and told to digitise the country's voter rolls using the BLO app during the Special Intensive Revision. The app crashed nightly. It had no autosave. Updates arrived mid-process, forcing workers to revisit households they'd already covered. Targets were set at 200 entries per day—each taking 20 minutes to upload, assuming the server didn't go down.

By late November, at least five Booth Level Officers had died in circumstances their families linked to the crushing workload. One left a suicide note describing an "inhuman" burden and fear of punishment for missing upload targets.

Swasti Chatterjee spoke to BLO workers in West Bengal to find out how the app meant to ease the process turned into the focal point of the crisis.

When The State Forgets To Verify: How Indian Citizens Became 'Illegal Migrants'

When Sunali Khatun crossed back into India on December 5, she had spent more than five months in Bangladesh, mostly in jail. Her alleged crime: being Bangladeshi. Sunali is eight months pregnant. 

The 26-year-old, accompanied by her eight-year-old son Sabir, returned to her home in Darjipara village in West Bengal's Birbhum district the next afternoon. Neighbors and local political activists gathered to welcome her. Her husband, Danish Sheikh, 28, remains in Bangladesh—out of jail on bail but unable to return.

Forced deportation without verification: Their ordeal began on June 21, when Delhi police picked up Sunali, Danish, their son, and three others from the Bangali Basti area in Rohini Sector 26 of New Delhi. Within five days, they were forced to leave through Assam — at night, without notice to their families. Court documents show no verification was done with authorities in West Bengal, where Sunali and the others had lived most of their lives. 

“We were always ready for every inquiry. We have land records dating back to 1952,” Sunali’s father, Bhodu Sekh, told Decode’s Snigdhendu Bhattacharya. “The irony is, the Delhi police made no inquiry or verification at all!”

EXPLAINED

What India’s SIM-Binding Mandate Means For Your Private Communication

SIM-Binding mandate: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has directed messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal to ensure their services cannot run unless an active SIM is installed in the user’s device and linked to their account. 

Government seeks traceability, cites scams: The government insists this “SIM binding” requirement will close loopholes exploited by cyber scam networks that rely on disposable numbers, virtual lines and multi-device logins to stay untraceable. But the directive has split the ecosystem. 

Industry divided: The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the telecom industry’s main body, has welcomed it as a long overdue step toward traceability. Platforms represented by the Broadband India Forum (BIF), however, say this pushes internet apps into telecom-style regulation without legal grounding. Hera Rizwan explains.

'FAKE NEWS’ YOU ALMOST FELL FOR

🔍  An unrelated video showing the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) perform a live-fire drill at a training ground in northern China in November this year was shared with a false claim that it shows a military build-up near the Arunachal Pradesh border. Read 🔗 Anmol Alphonso’s ↗️ fact-check.

🔍  A video claiming to show a Bangladeshi man residing in Kolkata illegally while saying that Bangladeshis would soon rule West Bengal and expressing support for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee; is fake and was created using artificial intelligence, 🔗 Srijanee Chakraborty ↗️ found.

🔍  Did External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar write a letter to French Ambassador Thierry Mathou about a leaked Rafale delivery schedule and the problems it caused? Find out in 🔗 Srijit Das’ ↗️ fact-check.

🅱️ RECOMMENDS

This week's recommendation is: People are more susceptible to misinformation with realistic AI-synthesised images that provide strong evidence to headlines

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Verified By Boom is written by Divya Chandra, edited by Adrija Bose and designed by H Shiva Roy Chowdhury.

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