PANAJI
The young, the old and even the infirm, many on wheelchairs, kept their date with elections in Goa on Tuesday.
They turned up at the 1725 polling booths in robust numbers, got their index fingers inked and cast their votes to choose their next representative in the lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha from both the North Goa and South Goa constituencies.
Across the State, people braved the scorching heat which breached the 34 degrees centigrade mark for well over five of 11 hours of voting between 7 am and 6 pm.
In at least eight booths across both the parliamentary seats, voters were burdened with an additional wait in queues outside as polling there had been suspended for time-periods ranging from thirty minutes to an hour because of malfunction of either the Electronic Voting Machines or the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines.
At the end of the day, election officials came up with clichéd summaries of Tuesday's poll process: "Polling was peaceful and incident free."
However, the official version does not quite tell the story of Tuesday's 11 hours of polling in which nearly 75% of Goa's 11-odd lakh voters moved from their homes to their designated polling booths to exercise this quintessential right-cum-duty of political democracy.
Vying for the honours in North Goa are two septuagenarian politicians -- incumbent MP Shripad Naik of the BJP and former MP Ramakant Khalap of the Congress. The third horse in the race is Manoj Parab, the boisterous head of the nascent regional party -- Revolutionary Goans Party (RGP).
In South Goa, the contest, in the main, is between the BJP's Pallavi Dempo and the Congress' Captain Viriato Fernandes. Like in the North, the RGP has also fielded a candidate in the South -- Rubert Pereira.
In both the seats there are five more candidates each in the fray mostly independents and candidates of minor parties.
VOTING FERVOUR
Since early morning on Tuesday, movement of people to their designated polling booths was brisk and there was enthusiasm even among seniors and wheel-chair bound infirm in most areas.
There was also disappointment, bordering on angst, on the faces of some others, whose throats were parched by the scorching heat and who were looking forward to the ECI promised lemon juice but didn't get one. Reports of incidents like these, where supplies of the refreshment either fell short or reached late to the booths have come in from various corners of the State.
By the time the half-way-mark was reached at 11 am an official estimate released by the Election Commission of India pegged the turnout in the first four hours at 30.94% -- 30.31% in North Goa and over a percentage point higher in South Goa at 31.56%.
A discernable departure from past polling day scenarios this time were the near absence or very subdued action outside polling booths, where volunteers and supporters of contesting parties usually gather in separate corners for voter mobilisation. In Panaji, for instance this activity was virtually absent through the day and was sparsely visibly only late evening in the last 5-6 pm hour.
PLAINTS FILED
While officials claim the process was incident-free, the over a dozen complaints filed on behalf of the Congress party in both the constituencies tells quite another story.
The Congress early in the morning filed a complaint with the office of the Chief Electoral Officer as well as before the Returning Officer against Ms Dempo for violating the model code of conduct (MCC) by making an appeal to vote for the BJP on air.
One of the audio-visual media outlets had approached her for a comment when she was leaving the Altinho booth after voting early on Tuesday morning where she appealed to voters to come out in large numbers and "vote for the BJP candidates".
Another complaint filed by the Congress was against Siddesh Naik, the son of the BJP's North Goa candidate, who is also the North Goa Zilla Parishad Chairperson. Naik, according to the Congress was wearing a T-Shirt with 'Support BJP" embossed on it while he was inside the polling both in Sao Pedro.
WOKE INNOVATIONS
There were the 'model booths', the 'pink booths' managed entirely by women and those manned by persons with disability (PwDs) which added glitz and an element of wokeness to the otherwise rudimentary polling exercise on Tuesday. There were also a few 'unique booths' including two in North Goa -- one at heritage edifice of the Old GMC in Ribandar and another on an island in Cumbharjua, access to which is possible only via two ferry rides.
The ECI also added another element this time around -- polling officials planting trees in spaces around the polling booths. In both the North and South Goa constituencies, a stretch of highways was also picked for polling parties to plant roadside trees. This tree planting activity was executed outside of Tuesday's polling hours.
