the goan I network
MARGAO
It’s official. The ensuing election for the zilla panchayats in the State scheduled around mid-March, 2020 will be held on party lines.
Reports that the government may do a re-think on holding the zilla polls on party lines has fallen flat with Panchayat Minister Mauvin Godinho asserting that the government has decided to hold elections on party lines.
Mauvin told The Goan that there’s no departure from the government’s earlier decision taken five years ago to hold the ZP polls on party lines. When pointed out that he had recently made a statement that the government will take a final call on holding the ensuing ZP polls on party lines, the Panchayat Minister conceded that he did make the statement, but hastened to add that the government has now taken the final decision to hold polls on party lines. “There’s no going back on the previous decision which had enabled holding of ZP polls on party lines”, he said.
To another question, the Panchayat Minister said elections for the North and South Goa zilla panchayats will take place in mid-March.
Since the zilla panchayats were created in the State in 2000, elections for these district
Panchayat bodies were held on non-party lines, allowing individual candidates and candidates backed by their political godfathers to throw their hat in the ring without the symbol of the political parties.
It was only during the last ZP election held in 2015 that the elections were held on party lines following a decision taken by the then BJP government.
While the ruling BJP and its coalition partners had contested the 2015 ZP election on party lines, the Congress party had declined to contest the elections on the party banner following a resolution adopted by the Congress headed by then Goa Pradesh Congress Committee Chief Luizinho Faleiro.
This time round, however, the Congress has already adopted a resolution to contest the forthcoming ZP election on the party banner.
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) too will contest the ZP polls on party lines. In fact, NCP lone MLA in the Goa Legislative Assembly, Churchill Alemao has even disclosed plans to field candidates in most of the seats of both North and South Zilla panchayats.
