Team Goemkarponn
PANAJI: Goa Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Goel has opposed a petition filed by St Cruz resident Paresh Salgaonkar and five relatives over the non-inclusion of their names in the electoral roll following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) 2026.
The response has been filed before the Bombay High Court at Goa, where the petitioners have questioned the circumstances in which their names ceased to appear in the electoral records.
Salgaonkar has stated that he has been a voter in the St Cruz constituency since 1995. He has challenged the rejection of his Form 8 application for shifting his electoral entry to a new address and has questioned why he was subsequently asked to seek registration as a new voter.
The petitioners have argued that their electoral entries could not have been excluded without following the safeguards prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, including notice, verification and an opportunity to present their case. They have asked the court to either direct restoration of their entries or require the authorities to examine their Form 8 applications on their merits.
Goel, however, has disputed the description of the case as one involving deletion of voters. His affidavit states that the names were not struck off from an existing final roll, but were not carried into the Draft Electoral Roll prepared during the SIR exercise.
According to the CEO, the Election Commission’s SIR instructions required enumeration forms to be prepared for voters who were listed in the electoral roll as of October 27, 2025. BLOs were then required to deliver the forms at the addresses corresponding to the voters’ existing electoral entries.
The affidavit states that Salgaonkar’s electoral entry was linked to Part No. 29, while he had subsequently shifted permanently to a rented premises covered by Part No. 25. The CEO maintains that the BLO was therefore required to follow the address available in the existing roll when carrying out the enumeration exercise.
Election authorities further claim that Salgaonkar did not submit the prescribed enumeration form by the December 11, 2025 cut-off, either through the BLO or through the online mechanism. As a result, his name did not figure in the Draft Electoral Roll released on December 16 and was subsequently included in the ASDD list.
The Form 8 application submitted by Salgaonkar on December 8 has also been defended by the CEO. Goel has argued that the form is intended for correction or shifting of an existing electoral record, and that the application could not be dealt with as a routine address-transposition request after the petitioner’s name was not included in the draft roll.
The CEO has also contested the petitioner’s interpretation of the provisions relating to ordinary residence under the Representation of the People Act, 1950. The affidavit relies on the petitioner’s stated permanent relocation to contend that the circumstances did not amount to a temporary absence from the original residence.
The petitioners have sought directions to the Election Commission of India and the Goa CEO to restore their electoral entries or reconsider their claims, besides seeking protection for Salgaonkar’s previous electoral history.
