Cong cautions BLOs against political pressure during SIR

MARGAO
Margao Congress Block on Wednesday cautioned the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) of Margao Constituency to stay away from pressures from political leaders who may use them to enrol bogus voters in the electoral rolls of Margao.
Addressing the media, Margao Block Congress Convener Savio Coutinho stated that upon receiving certain disturbing inputs, and as a matter of strategy to ensure the cleansing of Margao electoral rolls, the Block decided to get a daily report of the booth-wise enumeration forms that are distributed to the voters and the number of enumeration forms that are digitised by each BLO in Margao.
“As the SIR has just commenced yesterday on 4th November, we got the booth-wise enumeration forms recorded as distributed. It was rather amusing for us to note the figures against the majority of the booths ranging from over 250 to 450 forms claimed to have been distributed,” Coutinho said.
“While the BLOs often take a fortnight to distribute voter slips during elections, they managed to distribute nearly 50 per cent of the forms in a single day,” he said.
He added: “Since we had received information that BLOs were directed to hand over enumeration forms to some ruling politician of Margao, our BLAs called up their respective BLOs to cross-check. Not much to our surprise, we got figures contradictory to those recorded officially.” Coutinho said there were some booths where the distribution itself had not commenced, yet hundreds of forms were recorded as distributed.
The Margao Congress Block has called upon the ERO, AERO and the District Election Officer to ensure that the SIR is conducted in a responsible manner.
Knowing the fact that Margao electoral rolls are loaded with bogus voters that come down only during elections for voting, Coutinho said there is a strong desire of every Madgaonkar, irrespective of party affiliations, to have the rolls cleansed. As such, the BLOs should not do anything against the wishes of Madgaonkars.
Giving examples of how multiple layers of voters stand registered at a single house, Coutinho explained that certain premises that were once occupied by some voters are now under the occupation of some other voters registered at the same premises.
He, however, said the previous voters also continue to remain undeleted. “In this manner, multiple layers of voters get added, without deletion of the ones that no longer reside there,” he said.
Having studied the rolls and having considerable information about such bogus voters, Coutinho hoped that the BLOs would not succumb to pressures which may eventually land them in serious trouble.