Joaquim denies political interference

MARGAO, OCT 2
Asserting that reservation of wards was not done by the ministers or politicians, Urban Development Minister Joaquim Alemao has said that ward reservation was carried out by the Director of Municipal Administration as per law.
He, however, agreed that the wards have been reserved for the OBC or STs without a census or data, but hastened to add that system can be improved based on census in the next municipal polls.
Saying that it is not the duty of the Urban Development Minister to finalise reservations of wards, Alemao told newsmen at Cuncolim that allegations are inevitable over the manner in which the reservations were done in the municipal bodies.
“There’s no survey available of the STs and OBCs. But, the government had to go ahead with the reservation for OBC and ST because of the calling attention motion in the last Assembly session,” he said.
Incidentally, the urban development minister said neither the Chief Minister, Digambar Kamat nor GPCC general secretary Vijay Sardessai had interfered with the reservation of particular wards in Margao. “This is not the job of the CM, Sardessai or mine. The DMA carried out the job as per rules. There is no political interference at all,” he added.