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Goa reserves ZP seats for OBC women within 33 pc

Sandesh Prabhudesai in Panaji

Goa is set for another first in the election arena -- electronic voting machines will be used in zilla panchayat polls which, the state government told the courts, will be held on February 6.

Another interesting aspect of this election is that seats have been reserved for Other Backward Caste women within the 33 per cent quota.

Among the 30 ZP constituencies in the north and 20 in the south, the government has reserved 10 and seven seats respectively for women. Two and one among these are reserved for OBC women.

This is for the first time that Goa will have a two-tier system. Even after the 73rd constitutional amendment came into force in April 1994, on the lines of which Goa framed a new legislation, only village panchayat elections were so far held, in January 1997.

The Goa Panchayati Raj Act had made a provision for ZPs, even as the state opted out of the taluka panchayat system. But the actual process of ZP formation took place only after the All Goa Panchayat Parishad took the matter to court.

"As the Goa electorate is already used to EVMs in the assembly and Lok Sabha polls, we will conduct ZP polls also with EVMs," says Prabhakar Timble, the state election commissioner. A request has already been made to the Election Commission in this regard.

"We have no problem provided the EC develops norms for voting. We can spare our machines since the staff as well as the voters are educated in this regard," says R P Pal, the additional electoral officer.

Though reserving 33 pc seats for women is mandatory as per the Constitution, the issue of reserving some of these seats for OBC women has come under fire. Incidentally, there are no other category of reservations in the panchayat elections here.

But the move is not without its critics. "How can we have a separate quota only for OBC women when even Parliament is undecided over it," asks Dr Wilfred de Souza, the former chief minister whose Nationalist Congress Party is currently supporting the coalition government. He has sought legal opinion on the issue and is even prepared to challenge it in courts.

After toppling the Congress government in mid-November, Chief Minister Francisco Sardinha reversed his predecessor's decision to have a separate quota for OBC women, besides the 33 pc reservation for women, as it took the quota to almost 50 per cent.

While having no other reservation for OBC, like the five per cent at the village panchayat level, the government has also not made any provision for co-opting Scheduled Caste persons in the ZPs, like what Goa does at the panchayat level. Goa's SC population is hardly 10 per cent.

Sardinha, meanwhile, also reversed another decision of the Congress, to have a three-tier taluka panchayat. Former chief minister Luizinho Faleiro had suddenly taken the decision last year, almost five years after the state assembly had decided to stick to the two-tier system.

Since Goa is smaller than even districts in most states, it had requested the central government to allow only taluka panchayats and not ZPs, which is actually a constitutional requirement. But so far, no government at the Centre has moved the constitutional amendment in Parliament.

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