PANAJI
A special summary revision of electoral rolls which will eventually be used for the Goa Assembly elections due in early 2022, will begin from November 1 and conclude with the publication of the final rolls on January 5 next year.
The office of the Chief Electoral Officer announced the schedule for this Special Summary Revision, a routine and mandatory exercise to clean up the rolls and give an opportunity to those who are eligible to vote to register themselves.
The exercise is also an opportunity to contending political parties to file claims and objections against voters already on the rolls but are actually ineligible.
The CEO had called a meeting of all political parties including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress, Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Goa Forward Party (GFP) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) where the schedule was announced.
The meeting also discussed the schedule of checking the EVMs which arrived in Goa and which will be used in the Goa general election of 2022.
According to the schedule for special summary revision of the rolls, the draft roll will be published on November 1 and filing of claims and objections will begin the same day for a month. For four days in this one-month period, a special campaign block level officer (BLO) will be stationed at the relevant local police station on November 20, 21, 27 and 28.
The CEO's office will dispose all the claims and objections by December 20 and the final publication of the rolls will be done on January 5.
The First Level Checking (FLC) of the over 2,300 EVMs and VVPAT machines which arrived in the State from neighbouring Karnataka will begin tentatively from October 26, according to Additional Chief Electoral Officer, Narayan Sawant.
Meanwhile, GPCC general secretary Altinho Gomes who represented the Congress said, that Sawant has confirmed that BLOs from Mormugao, who were drawn from the same government department have been replaced wherever possible.
Both the Congress and GFP had demanded their replacement arguing that all of the BLOs were officials drawn from a single department -- Electricity department.
