PANAJI : The office of the Goa chief electoral officer, which carried out summery revision of electoral rolls for the 2017 state assembly election from September 15 to October 14, including two special camps held on September 18 and October 9, had focussed on first time youth voters between 18 and 19 years of age, and has registered 19,000 plus such voters in the list, who will be able to vote at the forthcoming polls.
The office of the Goa CEO also revealed that the summary revision of rolls during past three years shows increase in registration of new voters, mainly due to social media awareness and campus ambassadors.
The summary revision exercise further resulted in deletion of 510 voters from the electoral rolls for holding Portuguese nationality.
Coming out with this information, the CEO Kunal told the media persons during a media interaction that the state electoral rolls have been now perfected, even though new names of voters can be added to it till the last day of filing nominations.
“In fact, Goa is among the top states in the country in terms of its voter population included in the electoral rolls, which constitutes 71 per cent of the total population,” he added, informing that presently the total number of electors in Goa are 10,85,271, including 5,35,364 males and 5,19,907 females.
Kunal stated that Goa being a unique case, since large part of its economy is driven by tourism, including the wedding destination aspect, the office of the CEO will take due care while causing minimum inconvenience to the tourists.
Kunal said the Election Commission of India has issued a written directive to his office as regards not handing over indelible ink in its stock to the banks, for marking the people who are exchanging the now-defunct currency notes.
“As it stands, such ink has a shelf-life of only two weeks,” he noted.
Replying to a question as regards appointment of poll ambassadors for the Goa assembly elections, Kunal maintained that the work of identifying such persons is on as they should be apolitical and willing to give a message to the society.
It was also informed that a four-day certificate training course for more than 530 staff members of the state office of the CEO, including returning officers, would be conducted soon, and if anyone of them fails, subject to the following examination, then he or she would be taken away from the electoral process. The course would focus on leadership development plus all facets of election like material management, transport management and nominations.
A team of the Election Commission of India, led by the Chief Election Commissioner is expected to visit Goa, soon, to take a review of the preparations for the forthcoming state assembly election.
Joint CEO Narayan Navti and nodal officer (SVEEP) Dr Y Durgaprasad were present for the briefing.