South Goa MP Viriato Fernandes, a retired naval officer and Kargil war veteran, said he received a notice from the Election Commission of India (ECI) asking him to submit his documents for “proving my identity in order to retain my name in the electoral roll”.
Fernandes joined the Congress ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls and made his poll debut from Dabolim, losing out narrowly to BJP’s Mauvin Godinho. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Fernandes defeated Pallavi Dempo of the BJP, winning the South Goa constituency.
In a post on X, Fernandes said: “This notice is coming on the backdrop of ECI having subjected every contestant during last Lok Sabha polls in 2024 including me with the highest level of scrutiny before clearing name for contesting in the elections”.
His post went on to say that he had been voting since 1989.
“Travelled to Goa multiple times from far off places of military posting during my 26 years of service in [the] Indian Navy just to cast my vote, be it Lok Sabha, Assembly, Panchayat or Zilla,” his post said.
It goes on to add: “If a Member of Parliament can be subjected to this scrutiny, wonder the state of a common man, confirming concerns raised by Opposition parties and NGOs/citizens about SIR being carried out by ECI to delete names of legitimate voters and prevent from participating in the democratic process of voting”.
The notice issued to Fernandes said that in his enumeration form, he has not filled in the details “related to you or your relative that could establish you or your relative as a registered elector in the electoral rolls prepared during the previous SIR”. The notice asked him to appear before the assistant electoral registration officer in Dabolim on January 27, along with the original documents as prescribed by ECI to retain his name in the final electoral roll.
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Janavi Kalekar, joint mamlatdar-III Mormugao taluka and assistant electoral registration officer 26, Dabolim assembly constituency, issued a “clarification” on Thursday, stating that during the course of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the Booth Level Officer of part no. 19 collected the enumeration form pertaining to Captain Viriato Fernandes.
“It was observed that the enumeration form did not contain mandatory details of the last SIR, including the assembly constituency number, part number and serial number in the electoral roll. As these essentials were not filled in, the BLO application could not automatically link the form with the existing electoral roll record. Accordingly, in the present case, the enumeration form was placed under the ‘unmapped’ category by the system and a hearing notice was generated and issued automatically as per the prescribed procedure. Further, the matter is under inquiry,” the clarification said.
Over one lakh names were deleted from the draft electoral rolls in Goa, marking a deletion of 8.44 percent. According to data shared by the Goa chief electoral officer last month, out of 11,85,034 electors, 10,84,992 (91.56 percent) submitted their enumeration forms.
According to the data, of the 1,00,042 electors deleted from draft electoral rolls, 25,574 are dead; 29,729 are untraceable or absent; 40,469 have permanently shifted; 1997 are already enrolled at multiple places in the electoral roll and 2,273 are listed as others, who are not willing to register as an elector for some reason.
