Goa electricity dept refuses to relieve assistant engineer for poll duty, detained

Panaji: The detention of an assistant electrical engineer of the power department while he was on night duty at Tivim substation for allegedly refusing election duty snowballed into controversy on Thursday.

The engineer, responsible for the substation, was picked up by police under marching orders of the electoral registration officer for not joining election duty as a booth level supervisor.

The CEO’s office said the letter was issued to the engineer in April, while the electricity department said he was asked to join election duty training on Oct 31. Chief electrical engineer Stephen Fernandes said that technical people in essential services cannot be taken on election duty.Meanwhile, chief electoral officer Sanjay Goel said the SIR is a time-bound exercise and that often govt employees cannot be found from the same area.Goel denied that the engineer was illegally detained and said one govt employee cannot detain another.Fernandes said that the work of the department is being hampered because technical staff are being taken on election duty in large numbers. The assistant engineer was taken in by police personnel while he was on night duty at the Colvale substation for ignoring the SDM’s instructions.

North Goa collector Ankit Yadav said that the assistant engineer was appointed as the supervisor for the BLOs of the Calangute constituency. “Some proportion of the SIR forms have to be scrutinised by the BLO supervisor. The supervisor has to be a gazetted govt officer. This assistant engineer was appointed as the BLO supervisor. That is a mandatory requirement. He has to scrutinise a certain percentage of forms,” said Yadav.The electricity department hadn’t relieved the engineer from department duties to join election duty, stating that he held a key position in technically handling the 220 kV substation, which supplies power to North Goa, and there was a shortage of staff to carry out the specialised work.The department said that more than 460 of its staff, including engineers, line staff, and technical persons, have been taken on election duty.

They argued that if employees doing essential services, especially technical staff and line staff, are taken for election duty, their department would be rendered handicapped in providing and restoring power supply safely, as well as metering, billing and revenue.Goel said they have gone by the rule book and that this is not the first time marching orders have been issued.“The engineer was not illegally detained. How can one govt officer detain another? The SIR is a time-bound exercise. Every department is reluctant to relieve their officers as they have routine work, but from where will we get thousands of people suddenly to carry out the SIR?” he said, adding that govt employees living or working in the same area have to be appointed, and this is sometimes difficult to find in Goa.In Goa, 1,725 booth level officers and around 200 BLO supervisors are required to carry out the SIR exercise in addition to EROs and AEROs.