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Goa election likely to be held on May 29

Sandesh Prabhudesai in Panaji

The Election Commission is tentatively planning to hold the assembly election in Goa on May 29. The commission also hopes to declare the results on the same day, as Goa will be the first state in the Indian Union to use electronic voting machines in all its 40 constituencies.

But Deputy Election Commissioner Subhash Pani was tight-lipped about the election date during his visit to the state capital. "I can only say that we are technically getting ready for elections before monsoons," he said.

The special revision of the electoral roll will now be done from March 11 and end with the final publication of the electoral roll on April 28. The election office, however, will use the mother roll of 1995 with the revised supplements as last year's electoral roll is just being tendered for publication, for reasons best known to the local officials.

The commission is reportedly planning to begin the nomination process from May 5, to complete withdrawals by May 15. Giving only 14 days for the campaign, the polling date will probably be fixed for May 29, it is learnt.

Besides attending the meeting of local election officials, Pani, during his brief visit, also met the governor, Lt Gen (Retd) J F R Jacob, who is now running the state administration under President's rule. Though a few political groups have demanded that the election be held in the first week of June, Jacob is believed to have insisted that the polling should be done with by the end of May.

The interesting feature of these polls, however, will be the use of EVMs in all the 40 assembly constituencies, a total of 1,135 polling stations. The machines will be transported to the district counting centres soon after polling ends, and the EC is planning to announce the results within three hours as a mere push of the button will give the votes polled by each candidate.

But the commission is yet to decide when to begin the counting because the process may have to be postponed in case a repoll is ordered in even one polling centre.

"We do not want polling to be influenced by the trend of results," Pani said.

While the tiny state already has 500 EVMs lying idle, the local office of the Election Commission, in consultation with Pani, has decided to procure 1,000 more machines from Manipur by the month-end.

The commission, according to Pani, is also planning to create a separate green channel for those voters coming to the booth with identity cards. "But we will not make the cards compulsory," he added.

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