The Hindu: Panaji: Thursday,
April 28, 2016.
Candidates
must file the market value of their assets in their election affidavits, said
Bhaskar Assoldekar, co-ordinator, Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), on
Wednesday.
Addressing
presspersons and others at a voters’ sensitisation programme ahead of the Goa
Assembly 2017 elections, organised in association with the Goa Chamber of
Commerce and Industry (GCCI), the Goa-co-ordinator of ADR, the body
spearheading the cause of transparency in electoral democracy, said that during
the ADR’s recent interactions with Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi and
Election Commissioners, the issue of assets and liabilities was discussed.
Often, it has been found during analysis of affidavits that the candidates file
cost value of the assets which is of no use to assess the financial position of
a candidate or compare the change in his\her financial position over a period
of time. He further said that if a Returning Officer (RO) finds that any
candidate has left a single column of the affidavit blank, the RO is required
to give a reminder to the candidate at the time of scrutiny and if it still
continues to be blank, then the nomination is liable to be rejected during
scrutiny.
ADR will soon
hold a sensitisation programme for ROs in Goa about all these aspects.
Mr Assoldekar
said that the ADR had written to the Deputy Speaker of the Goa Legislative
Assembly (as the Speaker was away) to make available online information such as
the number of days of business conducted by the Goa Legislative Assembly during
the present term, the number of questions asked by members during each session,
etc, so as to assess their performance ahead of the election. Mr Assoldekar
impressed upon Goa Deputy Speaker Vishnu Wagh during their meeting on Tuesday
that at present, this information could be obtained only through an RTI query.
The letter
written to the Deputy Speaker also requests him to persuade the MLAs to file
annual statements of their assets and liabilities with the Legislative
Secretariat.
It was
pointed out during the interaction that though the MLAs and Ministers as public
servants are bound to file annual statements of assets and liabilities with the
Lokayukta office, the information is not available to the public as the
Lokayukta office says they have to hand over the same to a public authority
(State Governor\Chief Minister) as per the Lokayukta Act.
The ADR urged
the civil society and media to join hands to conduct audits of the performance
of MLAs, so that voters could be more informed.
ADR urges
civil society and media to join hands to conduct audit of the performance of
MLAs.
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