The date proposed by the State Election Commission and accepted by the government is October 18, but it comes with the rider that the elections will be held depending on the prevailing COVID-19 situation in the State. As explained by the State Election Commissioner, the Commission is going by the Constitutional provisions that make it mandatory that the process of hold the elections has to start before the end of the term, and the elections must be held at least 15 days prior to the expiry of the current term. The State Election Commission has also said that the Zilla Panchayat polls that were scheduled to be held on March 22 but were postponed due to the pandemic, could be held simultaneously with the municipal elections.
The suddenness of the announcement has raised eyebrows, and there has already been some criticism to the declaration of the poll date, which the government clarified saying the date had been approved in January this year, much before the pandemic. Yet, it has to be understood that what the commission has done is merely said that it is prepared to have the polls on October 18 this year as it is mandated to do. There is no notification yet and the actual election will depend entirely on how the pandemic pans out in the next few months. If the number of those getting infected increases in the coming weeks the polls could get postponed or cancelled, but surely there is no harm in being prepared to hold the elections.
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Across the world elections have been held in the last few weeks, despite the pandemic. Singapore held elections earlier this month and in April South Korea went to the polls. France held municipal elections in two rounds in March and the second round being postponed and held in June. Poland held presidential elections in two rounds in June and July, and Spain held the postponed regional elections in the Basque and Galacian regions. In November, the United States will elect its next president in an election that the whole world will be following. A large number of other countries have also held polls, or will be holding in the coming months.
While appreciating the fact that the poll process comes at time when there are several restrictions on gatherings and guidelines on social distancing, which will make campaigning difficult for the candidates, there is no reason for the political process to come to a halt because of the COVID situation. Goa and the rest of the country are returning back to forms of normalcy and the political process is one such form. Precautions will have to be taken, and they should. There is now much more known about the virus then in March this year, and by October there will be more facts available that would help understand the virus and to treat patients better.
We live in a world of optimism, and by October, the pandemic situation should hopefully have improved to situation better than it is today, not just so that the elections to the civic bodies and the rural district bodies can be held, but so that we can return to a semblance of the life we had before the shadow of the novel coronavirus fell upon the Earth. The elections will be one manner of showing that this is happening in Goa. Of course, if the pandemic is still raging, and hopefully it will not, then the elections will have to be postponed, but there is no harm in being prepared for them so that the wheels of democracy keep turning, whatever the situation.
