IS YATIN PAREKH A GOAN? SELECTED BY MONSERRATE AS MAYOR, ARE GOANS DEAD?

PANJIM: The Atanasio Monserrate panel has selected Mr Yatin Parekh as its candidate for the post of mayor of the Corporation of the City of Panjim, while the name of Mr Rudresh Chodankar has been selected for the post of deputy mayor.

“The question of selecting a non Goan to run the post of a Mayor by the uneducated education minister Babush Monserrate is disgusting” said Sachin a Panjimite. “are all Goans dead?” he further asked our Niz Goenkar correspondent who was talking to people.

The decision on fielding Mr Parekh, who was elected to the civic body four times, and Mr Chodankar, a three-time corporator, was taken at the meeting of the newly elected corporators late on Tuesday evening.

Mr Monserrate has said that he would meet the Chief Minister, Mr Digambar Kamat along with all the corporators of his panel on Wednesday and seek his help in beautifying the capital city of the state. He also said that he would seek immediate funds to the tune of `20 crore for the improvement of conditions and beautification.

He went on to add that his priority would be to keep the city clean, solve the garbage problem and also root out corruption from the corporation. Mr Monserrate also said that he would ensure that a public forum would be provided to the people residing in the corporation area wherein they would be able to air their grievances at least once in three months, on the lines of gramsabhas.

He said that he would take help of social worker and activist, Ms Patricia Pinto who has already launched a drive aimed at keeping the city clean, in the cleanliness drive adding that Ms Pinto would be co-opted as a corporator. He reiterated his desire to contest the next assembly elections from Panjim.

It should be noted here that the state election commission is yet to make official announcement of the results for the March 13 elections to the CCP. The highly placed sources at the SEC informed this daily that the announcement would be made on March 16 through a government gazette.

The CCP commissioner, Mr Elvis Gomes told The Navhind Times that the procedure calls for official announcement of election results by the state election commission, after which the directorate of municipal administration will have to issue a related notification.

“This would allow me to issue a notice for convening the meeting of the 30 newly-elected councillors for electing the mayor and the deputy mayor, under Section 16 of the City of Panjim Corporation Act, 2002,” he added, pointing out that the term of the outgoing council ends on March 20, 2011.

Speaking further, Mr Gomes said the particular Act allows nomination of five co-opted members on the 30-member CCP council, informing that such nominated members need to have special knowledge and experience in fields like municipal administration, engineering, architecture, archeology and heritage.

The CCP commissioner also maintained that the four special consultative committees – public health and market committee, public works committee, hospital committee and women and child committee – would be constituted when the new council takes over the CCP. “Each of these committees can have between three and seven members,” he mentioned.

Replying to a question, Mr Gomes said that he, in all probability, will convene the meeting of the 30 new councillors on March 18 for electing the mayor and the deputy mayor.