MAPUSA
The voters of Sauthawaddo, Calangute were left horrified early Wednesday morning after polling to their ward 9 had to be suddenly cancelled due to error in ballot paper and mismatch of candidate symbols.
The State Election Commission later in the day in an order rescheduled the polling in ward 9 of the Calangute panchayat for Thursday (Aug 11) between 8 am to 5 pm.
Within half an hour of the polling, some voters of ward 9 at the polling booth housed at the government primary school at Sauthawaddo, Calangute noticed a discrepancy in the ballot paper where the symbols and the names of two candidates did not match.
The Presiding Officer on duty who was informed of the error immediately adjourned the polling in the ward in view of the error in ballot paper and mismatch of candidate symbols.
But by then, around 15 votes had been cast and one elector who had applied for postal ballot had also cast his vote.
On the ballot paper the symbols appearing for two candidates “ Minesh Kalangutkar and Sapnesh Vaingankar “ were differing from the symbols allotted to them by the state election commission.
The symbol appearing for Kalangutkar on the ballot paper was Camera and the symbol for Vaingankar was shown as Car when the actual symbols allotted for Kalangutkar was Car and that of Sapnesh Vaigankar was Desk.
Since the ballot papers for the ward 9 had to be reprinted the SEC declared the polling for the ward as “void” and rescheduled the election to the ward on August 11.
The decision to cancel the polling upset several voters of the ward, who had queued up for voting. They lashed out at the election officials for doing an inept job for which they had to suffer and waste precious time.
“A lot of people got disappointed on account of the terrible mistake. It’s not fair on the voters. The SEC should have checked the ballot papers thoroughly,” said Shawn Martins, former sarpanch of the village who has been coordinating the election campaign of ‘Together for Calangute’ panel belonging to local MLA, Michael Lobo.
