Team Herald
MARGAO: Threatening to move the court over the reservation of constituencies for the Zilla Panchayat elections, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has asserted that neither the Congress nor the Bharatiya Janata Party is interested in devolving powers to the Zilla Panchayat and hence asked Goans to elect their party candidates and promised to get powers to the ZP.
AAP pointed out that the State Election Commissioner R K Srivastava had declared that he has received the list of the ZP constituencies with the reservations and announced that he would declare them the next day.
“However the next day he only declared the ZP poll schedule and did not mention anything about the reservation of the constituencies,” AAP Goa unit convener Elvis Gomes said alleging that the list was taken back from the SEC to the secretariat to do the manipulations.
He pointed out that while Guirdolim is being reserved for women for the third consecutive time, Velim Constituency that has a substantial ST population has not been reserved for ST at all since the ZP was constituted.
“The reservation was then manipulated and the reserved list of the constituencies was declared by some other source and not the State Election Commission,” Gomes said adding that AAP was demanding an enquiry into this and threatened to even move the courts to establish their point.
Elvis pointed out that while replying to unstarred question No. 1460 the Union Minister for Panchayat Raj through the annexure disclosed that Goa is the only State in the country not to devolve any of the 30 functions or powers to the Zilla Panchayats or Panchayats.
“The Constitution was amended to give more powers to the grassroots but the BJP that has been ruling Goa for the last eight years and is in power at the Centre has not devolved a single function to the ZP or panchayats,” he said questioning the need to hold the ZP elections.
“The BJP has been ruling Goa for the last eight years and has been in power at the Centre too and yet this party has not even lifted a finger to give powers to the ZPs in Goa while in all other States specific functions are devolved to the ZPs and panchayats,” he said.
Declaring that AAP will contest ZP elections, he admitted that they may not contest all the seats but will contest a substantial number and added that in South Goa they have already identified 12 candidates.
