Sandesh Prabhudesai
3 Mar 1999
The election commission is tentatively planning to hold Assembly
election in Goa on 29 May, while also planning to declare the results on the same day, if
possible, as Goa would be the first state to use electronic voting machines in all 40
constituencies.
Subhash Pani, the deputy election commissioner, during his visit here
however preferred to be tight-lipped over the election date. "I can only say that we
are technically getting prepared for elections before monsoons", he said.
The special revision of the electoral roll is now being rescheduled
from 11 March, to be ended on 28 April with final publication of the electoral roll. The
election office however would use the mother roll of 1995 with revised supplements as last
year’s electoral roll is just being tendered for publication, for the reasons best
known to the local officials for the unwarranted delay.
After giving a week more for entertaining applications to revise the
roll, the EC is reportedly planning to begin the nomination process from 5 May, to
complete withdrawals by 15 May. Giving only 14 days for the campaign, the polling day
would probably be fixed for 29 May, it is learnt.
Besides attending the meeting of local election officials, Pani during
his brief visit also met governor Lt Gen (Retd) J F R Jacob, who is presently running the
state administration during the President’s rule. Though a few political groups have
demanded to hold elections in the first week of June, Jacob learnt to have insisted once
again for elections as early as by May end.
The interesting feature of these polls however would be the use of
electronic machines throughout the 40 Assembly constituencies, having 1135 polling
stations. Bringing them at the district counting centres soon after polling ends, the EC
is planning to announce the results within three hours as mere pushing of the button would
give the voting figures of all the candidates.
But when the counting would begin is yet to be decided by the EC as the
counting process will have to be postponed in case repoll is ordered even at one polling
centre. "We do not want polling to be influenced with the trend of results",
says Pani.
While the tiny tourist state is already having 500 machines lying idle,
the local office in consultation with Pani has also decided to procure 1000 more machines
from Manipur by the month end.
The EC, according to Pani, is also planning to create a separate green
channel for those voters coming to the booth with the voting identity card in view of
encouraging the voters to use the cards. "But we will not make it compulsory",
he adds.
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