Panaji
Upping the ante against flouting the postal ballot process in the State, a six-party delegation will meet the Chief Electoral Commissioner (CEC) in New Delhi on Monday.
Congress, NCP, MGP, Goa Forward, GVP and GSP which met last week, had demanded the scrapping of the postal ballot fearing that some political parties and their candidates were trying to influence government servants on casting their postal ballots. The had also alleged severe lapses in the postal ballots in the State and accused officials of flouting the process in enrolling service voters.
AICC general secretary Girish Chondankar had said that the ECI should have taken suo moto cognizance of the issue and cancelled the voting through postal ballots. He had demanded fresh voting through EVMs.
Government officials, since they were on duty on election day were given the option of casting their votes through a postal ballot that was issued soon after the elections and which was to be received by the Chief Electoral Office (CEO) by March 11. There are a total of 15,590 government employees that were issued postal ballots.
Taking the issue further, the delegation will meet with the CEC and put forth their demands.
Meanwhile, the Chief Electoral Office constituted an inquiry committee to probe accusations that the office had misused funds. The five-member committee would be headed by Additional CEO Narayan Navti and would submit its report next week.
Raising objections to the committee itself, Advocate Aires Rodrigues called the move to be a “mere farce and eyewash.” He has instead demanded a free and fair enquiry into the allegations by a retired High Court judge assisted by an accountant.
He too has written to CEC Dr Nasim Zaidi seeking an independent probe into the acts of omission and commission by Goa CEO Kunal. “The probe into this mega crore fraud could not be a superficial in-house one conducted by officers who are working under Kunal himself,” he said.
