Niz Goenkar

MAPUSA: With municipal elections due one and a half month from now and electoral rolls being given finishing touches, Pernem is one municipality where large scale discrepancies have been found in the voters list.

On Thursday, there was utter chaos and confusion at the Pernem municipality as the voters list was found to be completely wrong.  According to the chairperson, Mr Nilesh Pednecar, anticipating a wrong list as had happened during the last municipal elections, he had written to the returning officer, Mr R D Mirajkar, on August 26 this year, asking him to take measures to ensure that a correct list was published.

Mr Pednecar said that inspite of this, a wrong list, making a mockery of elections in Pernem, was published by the office of the returning officer on September 9 and pasted on the building of the municipality.

With regards to this list published, many families have been divided and while half of the family members have been put in one ward, the other half have been put in another ward.

“There is also an instance wherein members of one family are voters of one ward and just one member from that family is a voter of another ward. This is complete mockery of the election process as not only will it discourage people from voting, but the victorious candidates also will not give much attention to such ‘scattered voters’ who are in pockets in different places,” informed Mr Pednecar.

He further added that actual voters of ward eight are now put in ward six and ward ten, voters of ward eight are put in ten, ward three voters are put in ten, ward ten voters are put in nine, ward seven voters are put in eight, eighteen voters of ward seven are put in ward eight and one family has half its members as voters of one ward while other half as voters of another ward.

The ten Pernem wards have an average voter strength of around 400 and the total voter strength in all these ten wards is around 4000, whoever wins in any ward does so by just a few votes and therefore there is anxiety and confusion in the minds of not only the voters but even the aspiring candidates. Mr Pednecar further said that in such circumstances notifying a ward for SC, ST or OBC was also not possible, as there could be every possibility that wards reserved for SC, ST and OBC would not consist of any such voters.

Therefore, he felt that the government should again order a resurvey of voters with the assistance of talathis. “Due to the Ganesh holidays people were not aware, but today, when they came to check their names in the list, they were confused and immediately informed me,” he added.

“In this regard, we have informed the election officers and tomorrow being the last day of putting forth our objections, we shall be objecting to the list as the presently published list is not acceptable to us and we faced public ire today against this list, which we presume was not published after thoroughly doing the ground work,” informed Mr Pednecar.

Significantly, there are no notified ST community members in Pernem municipal area though there are ST people living there. Mr Pednecar has urged the concerned officers to take cognizance of this mess and get the list corrected before the elections or else he said that he would have to approach the Court.