SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
Santosh Naik
PONDA: The village panchayat of Volvoi in Ponda taluka got a Sarpanch elected almost four and half years after the panchayat elections were held.
The post of sarpanch in the five-member panchayat is reserved for women and the three men who were elected as panchas had not supported either of the two women panchas for the post, thus keeping the post vacant since June 2017.
In this entire period since the last election, the deputy sarpanch, who was a man, remained in charge of the panchayat.
Now, after four-and-a-half years, one of the male panchas, Nilkant Naik and a lady panch member Anjali Vinayak Vengurlekar supported Anjali Naik and she was finally elected sarpanch.
As per the Panchayati Raj Act, when a panch member files the nomination for the post of sarpanch, the nomination has to be proposed and seconded by two other panch members.
However, in Volvoi, whenever one of the lady panch members filed her nomination, she would get proposed by the other lady pancha but none of the men in the panchayat would second the nomination. This continued for four and a half years till Tuesday, when Anjali Anil Naik was finally elected.
In the five-member panchayat three of the panchas are men and two are women. The other two male panchas include Digambar Tari and Rajendra Naik.
