PANAJI: Goa State Election Commissioner (SEC) W V Ramanamurthy on Thursday said that elections to 186 village panchayats are likely to be held in June and ballot papers will be used for voting.
“Constitution mandate says that these village panchayats have to be reconstituted before the first meeting of the earlier village panchayat and it was held on June 19. We have to complete the election process by June 19,” he said.
As per the recent amendment to Section 7 of the Goa Panchayati Raj Act, 1994, the task of dividing the panchayat area into wards and reservation of seats has been assigned to the election commission in consultation with the government.
The commission appointed 21 electoral registration officers (EROs) and assistant electoral registration officers (AEROs) to carry out the delimitation of 186 village panchayats.
“The draft delimitation proposal prepared by the EROs is kept open in the office of the respective ERO from February 24 to March 2 for the general public to submit their suggestions, modifications, and corrections,” the SEC said.
He said that the EROs will prepare the final delimitation proposals after considering the suggestions, modifications, corrections made by the public and will hand over the same to the commission through the respective district collectors or district election officers on or before March 8.
He said that the EROs will prepare the final delimitation proposals after considering the suggestions, modifications, corrections of the public and submit the same to the commission through the respective district collectors or district election officers on or before March 8.
“After we scrutinise the draft, we will send the proposal to the government for its comments. After we receive the comments from the government, we will notify the delimitation proposal,” he said.
Ramanamurthy said the summary revision roll prepared for the assembly election has been adopted for the panchayat election.
“The panchayat wards are constituted considering the geographical continuity, natural boundaries and number of voters,” he said.
In order to complete the delimitation task in an error-free and logical manner, the commission for the first time has rolled out a customised web-based software wherein each voter along with the house number is placed in his respective ward. Hence no voter or household has been left out, the SEC said.
