PANAJI
Nearly 74.81 per cent voters exercised their franchise to elect the new 30-member council of the Corporation of City of Panaji (CCP). The counting will be held on March 8 at Pharmacy College, Panaji.
Though 23,675 voters cast their vote, the election saw mere increase of 0.13 per cent, compared to last election.
Interestingly this time, the female voter turnout was more than males with a percentage of 75.22 per cent while the male turnout was 74.36 per cent.
Ward 17 witnessed the highest turnout with 776 (86.22%) casting their votes; while ward 2 witnessed the lowest voter turnout with 705 (63.12%) casting their votes.
Interestingly, apart from ward 17, eight other wards witnessed voting above 80 per cent “ ward 1 (83.27%), ward 7 (83.96%), ward 8 (82.49%), ward 15 (84.38%), ward 18 (85.35%), ward 19 (82.18%), ward 20 (83.33%) and ward 24 (84.46%).
Speaking to media persons after the voting process was over, District Election Officer Swapnil Naik said, “The voting percentage during this election is 74.81 per cent, with a slight increase of 0.13 per cent compared to last CCP elections which was 74.69 per cent.”
He informed that the overall number of voters during this election had decreased compared to the last elections.
“Last time it was 32,090, but this time it was decreased to 31,648. The number of voters who voted during the election in 2011 was 23,969 whereas this time it is 23675. So there has been a slight drop in the number of people voting. Since the total number of voters had reduced, the percentage has gone up”, he said.
While the voting went on peacefully the entire day, there were minor complaints of crowds gathering at various locations. No queues were seen at majority of the booths. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is a voter of ward 12 of CCP, also cast his vote at Massano do Amorim centre.
“There were no major incidents of law and order. But we received complaints about crowds gathering at some points, which were dispersed by our flying squads”, he said adding that there were no arrests and no cases of impersonation or bogus voting reported.
He also informed that complaints were received from Bhatlem, Ribandar and Altinho areas.
He, however, informed that there was no change of machines in any of the wards.
“In one or two cases we had some reports of link errors, which are a common thing. There is no loss of data here. And our troubleshooter team was moving around”, he informed.
Meanwhile, the counting of votes will be held on March 8 at Pharmacy College, Panaji.
“The counting will begin at 8 am and is expected to end by 10.30 am. We will have 16 tables and the counting is likely to be over in five rounds”, he said.
