Team Herald
PANJIM: A total of 89 candidates are in the fray from the 30 wards for the Corporation of City of Panaji (CCP) elections scheduled on March 6. A total of 31,504 people are eligible to exercise their franchise in the elections.
Of the 89 candidates, 30 are from the BJP-backed ‘Panjim First’ panel and another 30 from St Cruz MLA Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate supported panel. Congress has extended its support to 20 candidates. There are nine candidates who have filed nominations and are unsupported by any panel, most of these are BJP rebels.
The largest number of nominations has come from ward 25, where seven candidates are in the fray, followed by ward 24 with six candidates. Both wards are BJP strongholds but currently the party faces a backlash from its workers, who are upset over being left out from the poll process.
Ward 1 has five nominations, while seven wards – 7, 8, 12, 18, 19, 29 and 30 – will have four candidates each. Except for ward 19, all others are wards where BJP won last time.
The process of filing nomination that begun on February 9 concluded on Tuesday. Scrutiny of applications will be done on Wednesday and the valid list will be released on Friday. The last date for withdrawal of nomination is Saturday.
Voting will be through the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and counting will take place on March 8.
The expenditure limit per candidate has been increased to Rs 2.5 lakh which is almost three times compared to the 2011 election, wherein the limit was Rs 75,000.
