By IANS,
Panaji: After promising to conduct civic polls and count the votes cast the same day – unprecedented in recent Indian electoral history – the state election commission (SEC) Saturday reneged on its word.
The SEC, headed by state election commissioner M. Modassir, had earlier scheduled the counting of votes Sunday night, just a few hours after the voting for the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP).
But fearing a law and order issue, the counting of votes has now been rescheduled for Monday.
“I was personally asked by Director General of Police Bhimsain Bassi to postpone the counting for the subsequent day,” Modassir told reporters here.
Only last month, Modassir announced that for the first time in the election process in India, both polling and counting would be carried out the same day.
“The entire process will start at 8 a.m. and we expect to announce the results by 11 p.m., Modassir had said.
He had also said that the ‘one day’ elections would not only save the state money, but would also cut down on a lot of logistics, which is needed to be put in place for the otherwise long drawn exercise.
The polls are to be held from the Panaji corporation’s 30 wards, for which two major political parties, the Bharatiya Janata party and the Nationalist Congress Party, have floated their panels of candidates.
Over 30,000 people are expected to cast their votes.