Team Herald
VASCO: The State Nationalist Congress Party has submitted a memorandum to the Governor Mridula Sinha seeking her intervention in the delimitation of municipal wards in the forthcoming Municipality elections.
In its memorandum NCP Goa unit President, Jose Philip D’Souza raised his concerns over the ongoing delimitation process of municipal wards for the forthcoming municipal elections citing manipulations and has charged that the State BJP unit in the past had made a mockery of the ward delimitation process during the last panchayat as well as zilla panchayat elections only to pacify its aspiring workers/office bearers which is not according to the constitution.
“Earlier during the Panchayat as well as Zilla Panchayat elections, the BJP government had arbitrarily delimited the wards under village Panchayat’s jurisdictions without keeping geographical aspects and ground reality in mind and had deprived the rights of people to free and fair elections. Besides that, the process of making adequate reservations for women, SC/ST communities were not followed by the BJP government in the State and keeping all these issue in mind NCP demands that in the delimitation process the continuity of wards has to be strictly adhered to,” D’Souza demanded through his petition.
He further demanded that the delimitation draft rolls should be published latest by mid-August giving enough time to raise objections if any, besides that there should be proper reservation policies as laid down by the constitution.
“Therefore we request you to intervene and instruct the State government to follow necessary measures to hold the upcoming municipal elections in free and fair manner to reassure the Goan people that democracy is still alive in Goa,” D’ Souza appealed to the Governor.
