PANAJI
The State Election Commission (SEC) on Thursday informed that elections to the 186 village panchayats would be conducted in June and the election process would have to be completed by June 19.
“Elections to 186 village panchayats will be held in June and the entire process for the ensuing elections will have to be completed by June 19,” said State election commissioner W V Ramamurthy while addressing a news conference.
The elections process for the panchayats has to be completed by June 19, as the term of the present panchayat bodies comes to an end by the date.
Meanwhile, the SEC has started the process for the delimitation of 186 Village Panchayat areas into wards using a customised web-based software.
The SEC is using this software for the first time to complete the delimitation task in an error-free and logical manner. With this new technology, no voter/household is left out,” added W V Ramamurthy.
He informed that draft panchayats wards have been constituted considering parameters such as natural boundaries, geographical contiguity and number of voters.
“The wards will be such that the voters will not be made to travel for more than two kilometres,” said SEC. The draft delimitation has been done by using the final electoral roll published by the Election Commission on January 28.
The draft delimitation proposal prepared by Election Registration Officers (EROs) will be available in the office of the 2Mamlatdars and Joint Mamlatdars from February 24 to March 2 for the general public to submit their suggestions, modifications, corrections pertaining to the delimitation of village panchayat wards.
“The EROs will prepare the final delimitation proposals after considering the suggestions/ modifications/corrections of the public and submit the same to the commission through respective District Collectors/District Election Officers on or before March 8,” said Ramamurthy.
This is the first time the delimitation process is done as per the recent amendment to Section 7 of the Goa Panchayat Raj Act. The reservation of seats will be decided by SEC in consultation with the State government.
As per the draft, one ward in Sancoale panchayat has a maximum of 2,000 voters while a ward in the remote Neturli village has the least number of 112 voters.
