PANAJI
For nearly two decades since the first election to the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) was held in 2006, many political foes of Revenue Minister, Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate, have held strong suspicions over the neutrality of officials conducting the processes of delimitation and fixing the reservation matrix of the civic body’s 30 wards.
This time around with elections just six months away one of Monserrate’s baiters in the capital city’s civic politics “ Menino da Cruz “ is not leaving it to chance and has knocked the doors of the judiciary to ensure fairness.
Da Cruz had first approached the Bombay High Court at Goa with a plea that the process of delimitation be assigned to the State Election Commission and not the Director of Municipal Administration (DMA).
Da Cruz did not succeed in getting the High Court to overturn the amendment in the CCP Act which substituted the SEC with the DMA for the conduct of the delimitation of wards but he is not giving up.
He has now knocked the doors of the Supreme Court to challenge the constitutional validity of the amendment and the latter has now directed that a notice be issued to the State government.
The amendment inserted a new section which has transferred the powers of the SEC to conduct the delimitation and given it to the DMA.
Da Cruz is a two-time councillor of the CCP having served his first term in 2006-11 and a second in 2016-21, representing the Bhatlem-Portais area.
In the petition, Da Cruz argues that the amendment violates the basic structure of the Constitution which envisages ‘separation of powers’ between the executive and constitutional bodies like the SEC.
He said giving the powers of delimitation to DMA which is a government-controlled body affects the independence of the process.
Advocate on record Salvador Santosh Rebello appeared with counsel Rohit Bras de Sa and others.
Monserrate, who has been in control of the capital’s civic body since his group first captured power in the 2006 election, barring a brief two years when the Late Manohar Parrikar’s group took control in 2012-14, has faced criticism from political foes who accuse him of influencing the State machinery in the election processes.
In the last elections held in 2021, another of his civic politics foe, Nelson Cabral had challenged the delimitation of CCP wards before the Bombay High Court and succeeded.
Cabral had alleged malafide in excluding his and another 40-odd houses in his neighbourhood in Dona Paula from the jurisdiction of CCP specifically to disenfranchise him and make him ineligible to contest the election.
The State had then argued that Cabral’s house falls in the jurisdiction of the Taleigao panchayat and therefore excluded from the CCP’s jurisdiction. However he countered that his household had always been in the CCP’s jurisdiction evident from the fact that he wasn’t part of the electoral rolls at the Taleigao ZP bye-poll held a few months earlier.
Cabral was reinstated in the CCP electoral rolls and went on to contest and win the 2021 election from Dona Paula (ward no. 1) and is a councillor presently.
He had also represented the area before the CCP was formed when the capital was governed by the Panaji Municipal Council and on a second occasion his wife Priscilla was the councillor from the ward.
Meanwhile former mayor and Panaji’s civic politics veteran, Surendra Furtado has also demanded that the process of delimitation of wards and reservation be transparent and fair.
Furtado met DMA at Patto last week and urged him to ensure that the reservation and geographical boundaries of wards be finalised well in advance.
