Porvorim: Opposition MLAs came down heavily on chief minister Pramod Sawant in the assembly during a calling attention motion on Thursday, after the CM said govt wants to link death registration with the automatic deletion of the name of the deceased from the electoral rolls.The suggestion to link the two came from Mormugao MLA Sankalp Amonkar as a calling attention, but opposition MLAs opposed the move.They criticised the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, stating that already around 1 lakh voters were deleted from Goa, which is equivalent to an entire assembly constituency of the state. They demanded an extension of time for voters to challenge changes to the rolls.The chief minister assured that he would request the Election Commission for an extension of time for voters to challenge the deletion of their names.
St Andre MLA Viresh Borkar said that the verification of unmapped voters is urgently needed, as some may be working on cruise liners, or a mother may be away staying with a married daughter, or the family could be simply out travelling.He said these voters need time to challenge the removal of their names from the rolls.“Almost 20% to 30% deletions will take place, mostly Goans, if a time extension is not given. BLOs are given the levy of applying ‘personal satisfaction’ to cases, and if an MLA pressurises, this ‘personal satisfaction’ could be used to delete a name,” said Borkar.Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai said that his constituency saw one of the highest numbers of voter name deletions.“There is a dangerous implication to this seemingly innocent calling attention motion by Sankalp Amonkar,” said Sardesai.Around 4,400 voters were deleted from my constituency when I win by 1,500 votes or so. The govt spent Rs 1.58 crore on SIR; what did we achieve? ECI itself accepts it has no mechanism to check foreign citizens or duplicate voters. It means a Nepali voter can come and vote here. What the CM is proposing now is permanent automated deletion pipelines between death registration and ECI,” said Sardesai.He said it will mean no notice is issued to the family and no hearing is given. The family will only get acknowledgement once deletion already takes place.“SIR broke families; the husband is recorded, the wife is not recorded. And now govt wants to freeze it. Somehow, these are people who will never vote for BJP. Once deleted from SIR, the burden to prove lies on the voter. Now the right to vote will become a bureaucratic privilege,” said the Fatorda MLA.Leader of opposition Yuri Alemao said that BLOs are giving instructions to produce documents to voters orally and informally, and that documents required for SIR are not being uniformly applied.“Govt spends crores on advertisement, but citizens are not given clarity when they urgently need it. Accuracy doesn’t come at the cost of just removing voters. The numbers deleted are not statistically possible unless something went terribly wrong somewhere,” said Alemao.The CM said the govt’s only intention behind SIR was to ensure ‘one citizen, one vote’ by eliminating duplicate and non-citizen voters from the rolls.“Those who died, their names remained for up to 20 years in the rolls. It affects the percentage of voting too. Some people have up to five voter cards,” said Sawant.
