By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Governor RS Mooshahary has urged upon the people particularly the youth to exercise their right of franchise freely without fear or favour and to maintain the best traditions of peace and harmony during the run-up to the election in general and during the conduct of poll in particular.
While addressing the Republic Day function, he said that the administration shall make all out efforts to ensure free and fair conduct of elections in the State.
According to Mooshahary, there are 148819 eligible voters in the state out of which female voters constitute a figure of 752925 even as he said that there has been an increase of 256445 voters over the total electorate registered during the Assembly poll of 2008.
100428 voters have registered during the last year and the initial part of the current year alone and this increase is due to successful implementation of the Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme.
Meanwhile, Mooshahary suggested that the Ministry of DoNER needed to go back to its original mandate of advocacy and co-ordination, a role which suffered because it had been over-shadowed by its project implementation focus.
He said that with the creation of the full-fledged Ministry of DoNER, there is some confusion about the respective roles of the NEC and the ministry. He also believed that the original mandate of the DoNER involved advocacy for the NE region and coordinating development efforts.
“While it has performed this role on occasions in recent past, it has also taken on the role of a funding agency leading to an overlap of function with the NEC and this has become a distraction and it is not clear as to why two windows of funding should be administered in this manner by two different entities,” he said.
He also opined that the NEC should be re-designated as an attached office of the Ministry which would be responsible for implementation of schemes including NLCPR, with the exception of the NLCPR (centre) which would continue to be with the Ministry.