99.6% of enumeration forms digitised: Goa electoral office

Panaji: A total of 99.6% of enumeration forms (11.8 lakh) of the total electorate of 11.85 lakh in Goa have been collected and digitised as of Friday evening, stated the office of the chief electoral officer (CEO). It has also appealed to electors who have not submitted their enumeration forms to do so at the earliest, as the last date to do so is Dec 11. Electors can also submit enumeration forms online through voters.eci.gov.in, the office stated.

Citizens for Democracy Goa has written to the Election Commission of India over the proposed deletion of 90,000 voters and issues affecting non-resident Indian voters under SIR. The people’s collective, led by former bureaucrat Elvis Gomes, is seeking an extension of a minimum of three months for NRIs to comply with the procedure.

Gomes is also seeking an extension for resident voters by another week for genuine left-out voters who have fallen in the Absent Shifted Dead Duplicate (ASDD) bracket to seek rollback. He is further seeking a directive to all booth level officers, additional electoral registration officers, and electoral registration officers to delete all voters registered at commercial establishments that are neither non-operational nor clearly unsuitable for residential purposes. This summary deletion should be done without the requirement of a Form 7 to be filled by the public, he has stated.

“Those responsible for such rollback should also be made liable to face action under the Representation of People’s Act besides disciplinary action,” the communication stated. There was injustice caused to the NRI community, which is disproportionately large in Goa, Gomes stated.

“The system requires a perfect character match between the Aadhaar card and the Voter ID. It mandates the voter’s India-based phone number to be linked to the Voter ID prior to the commencement of the SIR for the purpose of receiving an OTP. These strict pre-requirements effectively discriminate against NRIs who do not maintain an active India phone connection or whose records may have minor clerical discrepancies, rendering the online facility unusable for the very population it was meant to serve,” the communication to the ECI further stated.