PANAJI
The mass removal of 28 of the 30 Block Level Officers (BLOs) of Panaji assembly constituency issued in mid-April has been kept in abeyance by the office of the Deputy Collector & SDM, Panaji following directions from the North Goa Collector who also doubles up as District Election Officer.
All the 28 BLOs who had been transferred and replaced with fresh BLOs drawn from various government departments will now continue and the SDM has instructed heads of these departments not to relieve them.
Those who may have already taken charge as BLOs based on the April 17 order now kept in abeyance have been directed to return to their parent departments.
The Goan had reported the mass replacement of these Panaji constituency BLOs as an unusual development in its May 12 edition. The issue had also been flagged by former bureaucrat and Congress politician Elvis Gomes
More recently, former CCP Mayor and five-time councillor Surendra Furtado had also written to the Election Commission objecting to these sudden mass replacements of BLOs exclusively in Panaji constituency and in none of the other 39 constituencies.
Although the order was issued by the SDM in mid-April, it was served on the transferred BLOs and the officials who replaced them in the first week of May. Most of the 28 new BLOs in the order were either lower division clerks (LDCs) or Multi-Tasking Staff (MTS) picked from different government departments.
The move to pick Panaji exclusively to effect such mass transfers of BLOs raised suspicions in the capital's political circles as elections to The Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) are due in 10 months.
It also came in the backdrop of allegations of voter list manipulation and the complicity of BLOs and higher election officials made by Opposition parties -- Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) -- in two most recent State assembly elections in the country -- Maharashtra and National Capital Territory (NCT), Delhi.
BLOs play a crucial role in the election machinery responsible for updating electoral rolls and their reports physically verifying credentials of applications for either addition or deletion of voters are decisive.
Election machinery officials are usually lower and middle-level bureaucrats drawn from the revenue department or the District Collectorates, both coming under the administrative control of Revenue Minister Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate represents Panaji constituency and draws much of his electoral muscle from his hegemony over CCP politics since 2006.
