the goan I network
PANAJI
After dithering on taking a decision for days, the State Election Commission finally put off the March 22 polling schedule indefinitely in the wake of the threat from the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The State Election Commissioner R K Srivastava announced the decision to put off the polling on Tuesday next, hours after he was directed by the Bombay High Court at Goa to reconsider his decision to go ahead with completing the ZP poll to elect 50 members of the district-level panchayati raj bodies.
Srivastava told journalists in Panaji on Friday evening that fresh dates for the polling and subsequent counting will now be announced later when the situation due to the pandemic settles a bit.
Although Goa has not reported any positive case yet, the threat of the pandemic looms at its doorstep with the two neighbouring States which the State shares borders with -- Maharashtra and Karnataka -- having reported several cases and even deaths.
The ZP polls were earlier slated to be held on Sunday but with Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealing for a ‘janata curfew’ in his address to the nation, the Pramod Sawant government in consultation with the SEC had postponed it by two days to Tuesday next.
But on Friday, at a meeting chaired by the prime minister and held using the video-conferencing protocol with Chief Ministers of all States and in which Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant participated, it was decided to postpone several events of greater significance than a mere ZP poll.
Accordingly, the State government advised the SEC to defer the polls.
