PANAJI
Polling for Zilla Panchayat elections will be held on December 12 and the State Election Commission will follow the Covid-19 protocols which the Election Commission of India did in the recent Bihar assembly elections.
Counting of votes will be held on December 14.
According to State Election Commissioner Chokha Ram Garg, IAS, over 7.91 lakh voters will be electing 48 zilla panchayat representatives, 24 in each of the two districts in the State.
"We will follow all SOPs of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The Election Commission of India has already conducted elections in Bihar. We will follow those protocols," Garg said.
Garg said, the Covid situation in Goa is comfortable with 1,300 active cases.
Polling will be held over 1200 polling stations across the State via ballot paper and not EVMs.
The zilla panchayat elections were originally fixed to be held on March 22 and campaigning had already ended. But the polling had to be postponed due to the pandemic and national lockdown.
Although there are 50 zilla panchayat constituencies, elections will be held in only 48 as one candidate has been elected unopposed and on one seat it has been countermanded due to the death of a candidate.
This time the zilla elections are to be held on party lines. The partywise distribution of candidates is as follows “ BJP 41 (25 in North and 16 in South), INC 37 (21 in North and 16 in South), NCP 6 (3 in North and 3 in South), MGP 17 (7 in North and 10 in South), AAP 20 (7 in North and 13 in South), Rashtriya Samaj Paksh (1 in North).
