PANAJI
The first votes for the two Lok Sabha seats in Goa were cast on Monday when some senior citizens aged 85 and above besides voters with disability got their fingers inked through the facility provided by the Election Commission of India.
The office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Goa, however, could not give the exact number of persons who voted on Monday, the first of five days allocated for the purpose.
Designated officials from the respective District Election Office (DEO) visited the homes of these elderly voters with a pre-appointment between 9 am and 5 pm and facilitated their voting process on Monday.
This exercise will continue for the next four days until May 3 in both the North Goa as well as South Goa constituencies.
Apart from these two categories -- senior citizens and the disabled -- also eligible for this postal ballot paper voting are those 'absentee voters' who would be on essential services duty on the May 7 polling day. They, however, will not get to exercise their franchise from home and instead have to cast their votes mandatorily at their respective Postal Voting Centres on three days from May 3 to 5 between 9 am and 5 pm.
On Monday separate polling teams visited the registered address of these seniors and disabled as provided by them in Form 12D previously. However, the data of the total number of votes cast by voters from their homes had not been collated centrally by the CEO's office until late Monday night.
Meanwhile, the North Goa district election officer has notified the schedule of voting for yet another category -- those who will be on election duty on the May 7 polling day -- separately.
As per the schedule, members of polling parties, sector magistrates, flying squad members, AROs, AEROs and other election related staff like police personnel, Goa IRB and Home Guards on election duty.
