FIRST CASUALTY

Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte today expressed displeasure in the Panchayat ward reservation in Bardez taluka, as done by the state election commission.
Khaunte said that while the OBC community is not given any reservation, the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe reservation is also not as per the population in Bardez panchayats.
He explained that reservation is made for the community in panchayats, where there are co-opt SC members.
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant today said that his party is ready for the Panchayat elections and that there was no hidden motive behind delaying the elections.
“BJP is ready for Panchayat Elections; we had no hidden motive to delay elections, wanted it postponed due to the reservation issue so that there is no injustice done to the OBC community,” said CM Sawant.
He further said that his government wanted to make the reservation, so they had asked for extra time.
“When SC told us to take elections only after ‘triple test’ which couldn’t be done only by Director of Panchayat, we had to do it in consultation with OBC commission for which we required more time,” he added.
Sawant said that this reservation was for the only fact that there was no injustice done for OBC and that there was no other motive than this.
The state election commission (SEC) on Friday issued a notification for reservation of wards for the August 10 panchayat elections without the OBC reservation. SEC
has reserved wards for scheduled tribes (STs), scheduled caste (SCs) and women.
The notification comes even as the state government has said that it wants to do justice to the OBC community.
Election commissioner W V Ramanamurthy said that the SEC has had to notify “the reservation of seats for 186 village panchayats without OBC reservation” due to the absence of OBC data that complies with’ “the triple test
formality as prescribed by the Supreme Court.”
The SEC, he said, has notified “reservation of seats for general elections to 185 village panchayats. except one village panchayat, which will be notified in due course”.