NT NETWORK
PANAJI
The Panaji constituency witnessed some sweet and some sour moments – during the polling conducted for assembly election, with a voter passing away while going to perform his electoral duty, just as the Election Commission dedicating a special polling station to the first-time voters, and giving away souvenirs to handful of them.
During an early part of the day, in an unfortunate incident, Dr Leslie Saldanha, a city voter passed away after suffering a stroke, when he had gone to cast his vote at the polling station at the Mary Immaculate Girls’ High School, in Fontainhas.
“Dr Saldanha, a 78-year-old citizen collapsed when he was at the entrance of the polling station number 12,” informed the North Goa Collector Nila Mohanan, adding that he was immediately rushed to the nearby private hospital, where he passed away.
The capital city, which posted 77.06 voting percentage, had its polling station number 27 at the Goa College of Arts decorated with pink balloons and pink cloths, and the polling staff wearing pink dress as a part of the women empowerment initiative of the state Chief Electoral Office.
The presiding officer at this polling station, which had marked 970 voters for casting their votes, informed that 5 pink teddy bears were given to the first-time female voters.
She also added that 8 first-time male voters were given writing pens.
Panaji constituency also witnessed the friends-turned-arch political rivals, the Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and the Goa Suraksha Manch supremo Subhash Velingkar casting their votes at the same polling station – Masano de Amorim School – during early hours, as soon as the polling exercise started.
Parrikar, after casting his vote said that he is missing Goan food in Delhi, and has already lost four kg.
“I would do whatever the party asks me to do,” he maintained, asking the media persons to draw their own inferences from the statement vis-à-vis possibility of his return to Goa as the chief minister, if the Bharatiya Janata Party returns to power. The Defence Minister predicted that the BJP will win two-thirds of the seats.
Velingkar reiterated his prediction that the GSM-Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party-Shiv Sena grand alliance would win
22 seats.
Atanasio ‘Babush’ Monserrate of the United Goans Party, supported by Congress, who is one of the main rivals of Sidharth Kunkalienkar of the BJP, said that he has direct connect with the city people.
“People know why my rivals are digging up criminal cases against me at this time,” he said, expressing confidence that city voters would now vote for a change, after 23 years, and he would be the next city MLA.
Most of the city voters in the Panaji constituency arrived at the polling stations in small groups, and these polling stations seldom saw long queues.
Furthermore, the city voting also followed the state trend of registering 15 per cent voting after two hours from starting of the polling exercise, 34 per cent after four hours, and crossing 50 per cent mark after 6 hours.
Incidentally, the state Chief Electoral Office could not provide wheelchairs for the senior citizen voters in all polling stations. However, some of the polling stations, including the one at the Goa College of Home Science had this facility.
There were also instances in some of the polling stations, wherein workers of a political party warned the voters outside some polling stations that their votes are no longer secret due to the VVPAT (Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail) method of providing feedback to voters.