PANAJI
Insisting that the time limit of seven days to study and offer suggestions on delimitations of wards is not enough, Panchayat Raj activist Soter D’Souza has said a period of at least 15 days should be given so that people get time to study and put their suggestions.
How will people convene gram sabhas and discuss the issue in such a short time,” asked D’Souza.
“There are complaints time and again about political interference in ward delimitation. The number of voters in some wards is high while in some cases, it is small.”
He claimed that the new delimitation plans have not shown landmarks such as Panchayat Ghar, hospital, playground, religious places, hotels, etc. which can be easily identified.
“Instead, some unknown landmarks have been put and this makes these plans difficult to interpret,” said D’Souza.
D’Souza has submitted some of these objections about the Socorro village delimitation plan before the Joint Mamlatdar.
South Goa former Sarpanch and Goa Panchayat Democratic Forum General Secretary Joseph Vaz has also complained before the Joint Mamlatdar.
On the same lines, the Socorro Gram Sabha passed several resolutions
including extending the time limit from 7 days to 15 days for scrutiny of draft delimitation of wards and the need to ensure even distribution of voters in wards as far as possible, to prevent creation of comfort wards for some politically connected persons to contest.
The Gram Sabha also resolved that ward numbers should not be changed to circumvent the reservation criteria of rotation which is followed every 5 years and that, house numbers listed in the draft delimitation of wards need to be cross-checked with site visits by officials to ascertain they are within physical demarcations of the ward boundary.
