The fiasco of ward reservations of the municipal polls throws up many questions. For starters, the truncated municipal elections in Goa will now take a much longer period to complete, and there is every possibility that the counting of all councils could be held simultaneously. The State government had planned to club the postponed municipal elections along with the elections to the Corporation of the City of Panaji and the various by-elections to vacant panchayat seats and the lone Zilla Panchayat seats together so as to reduce the period during which there would be a election code of conduct in place, that would prevent the government from taking up new works and announcing policy decisions. With the Supreme Court upholding the order of the High Court of Bombay at Goa stalling the election process in five municipal councils, this tight period of a code of conduct will now not be possible, as the elections are currently being held in two phases.
While the State capital and five municipal councils and panchayats where there are by-polls will hold elections this weekend on Saturday, the five councils where the process has been stalled will hold elections next month. The State Election Commission has been given up to April 30 to complete the process in these five councils. In effect, Goa will remain under a code of conduct for a period of two months or perhaps a little over that depending on when the second phase of polling is scheduled. It practically doubles the period code of conduct that the State would otherwise have been under. Ironically, it was an error of a government department that caused this to happen.
This effectively shatters the plans of the government to get into development mode in the final lap of its term, especially since the Budget that will be presented this month will be the last before the State Assembly elections are held. The Budget next year will be presented by the new government that will take office sometime in March 2022.
However, if the code of conduct causes the government some inconvenience in its development plans, it is the citizens who would be further troubled as certain works and tasks would be held back for want of sanction. For instance, will the pre-monsoon work that is required to be completed in the coming summer weeks in the councils that are going to the polls next month be undertaken or will it pushed forward due to the model code of conduct?
The reason for bringing this up is that the situation has been caused because a certain department or certain officers or perhaps certain politicians have erred. Will there be accountability fixed? The government has been severely embarrassed and has been forced to spend on a court case in the High Court and the Supreme Court trying to defend an error – deliberate or otherwise. It cannot ignore that this has occurred. Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant has pointed at the Department of Municipal Administration for this mess. Will the Minister for Urban Development, Milind Naik, be held responsible? Will the Department head be asked to explain? For that matter, will anybody in government be held responsible? Going by past experience, this is unlikely.
There is no accountability in government, a reason why officers and politicians can often get away with errors. It is time that this answerability is brought about in government. All it requires is a will in the government to take action against officers who blunder, and the current case was a blunder and not a mere error. This demands action from the government to indicate that it will not permit such slipups again.
