Parrikar funeral

ment, told local media in the afternoon talks were underway and they have not been informed of any swearing-in ceremony schedule yet.

“Nothing about the swearing-in ceremony has been finalised,” Goa Forward Party chief Vijai Sardesai, who was a minister in the Parrikar government, told reporters in the afternoon.

“I am not aware of when the swearing in ceremony will be held,” Independent MLA Govind Gaude, also a minister, said.

Union minister and senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari, who is in Goa since Sunday, has also been holding parleys with the party’s alliance partners to select Goa’s new chief minister through consensus.

Meanwhile, Parrikar’s last rites were held with full military and state honours at Panaji’s Miramar beach on Monday evening. Thousands of supporters and BJP workers accompanied the funeral cortege from the Kala Academy Arts and Cultural Centre, where the remains had been kept throughout the day for the public to pay last respects.

The mortal remains of Parrikar, wrapped in the national tricolour, were placed on a pyre amid a 21 gun salute at the beach and his elder son Utpal Parrikar consigned it to flames.

Top BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah, Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Irani, Suresh Prabhu and Ramdas Athawale offered floral tributes to Parrikar.

Parrikar, 63, is survived by two sons, two daughter in-laws and a grandson. for 2 crore unemployed persons and never deliver those promises, or for a government which addressed the woes of the common man.

“The decision you will take in the ensuing elections will decide your children’s future. Understand this carefully. I could have stayed back at home. For many years, I had been sitting at home. Why I have come out today? I have come out because the country is in danger. The Constitution of India is in danger.”

“You have seen how the Congress party worked when it was in power at the Centre... The situation that we have today, was not there in the past 45 years. In the past 45 years, there was never a time when such fewer employment opportunities were there,” she said.

The 47-year-old Congress general secretary incharge of eastern Uttar Pradesh also paid obeisance at the Akshay Vat, a sacred fig tree, and Saraswati Koop, the well under which the mythical Saraswati river is said to flow, on the banks of the Sangam, before embarking on her three-day Ganga Yatra.

A large number of Congress workers, including women, had gathered since early morning to catch a glimpse of Priyanka Gandhi, shouting slogans like “Priyanka nahi yeh andhi hain, Doosri Indira Gandhi hain (She is not just Priyanka but a storm, she is the second Indira Gandhi)” and “UP mein badlav ki andhi, Priyanka Gandhi Priyanka Gandhi (Storm of change in UP, Priyanka Gandhi Priyanka Gandhi)”.

Priyanka Gandhi, who has been addressing various party events for some time now in Uttar Pradesh where 80 Lok Sabha seats are at stake, said that she was unhappy to see how politicians are made to stand on the stage, and the people are forced to sit on the floor.

“Wherever I am going, I am saying that this is a very bad habit-you make a very huge stage, make the politician stand on it and you all sit on the floor. Change this habit. In a democracy, it is your right to ask for the solution to your problems,” she said.

Congress state unit chief Raj Babbar, national spokesperson Akhilesh Pratap Singh and Ganga Yatra coordinator and party MLA from Rampur Khas Aradhana Mishra were also present.

Babbar said Priyanka Gandhi had come to the Sangam to seek the blessings of Ganga Maiyya (Mother Ganga) and drive home the point that like the holy river, the Congress wanted to embrace all.

Priyanka Gandhi will reach Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary seat of Varanasi on Wednesday. She will visit the residence of former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in Ramnagar area and offer prayers at the Kashi Vishwanath temple. She will also take part in a Holi programme and meet Congress workers at the party’s district office before getting back to New Delhi.

Polling will be held in seven phases in Uttar Pradesh from April 11 to May 19. Results will be announced on May 23. Sahu’s namesakes polled some more votes. The namesake Sahus together received 62,934 votes, or 5.6% of the total votes.

In other places too, top contestants faced more than one candidate with the same name. For instance, there were five candidates named Lakhan Lal Sahu in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur Lok Sabha seat and three candidates named Jarnail Singh in West Delhi Lok Sabha seat. In Punjab’s Zira assembly seat, Kulbir Singh of the Congress and Gurpreet Singh of the Aam Aadmi Party were among the top three contestants. Each of them had three more namesake candidates in the fray for the same seat.

The impact of the namesake candidates on top contestants may be much larger if candidates with similar but not the exactly s ame name are t aken i nto account. For instance, names of two candidates in Chennai South Lok Sabha seat sound similar: “S.v.ramani” and “S.veeramani”. Even in the Mahasamund seat, where Sahu faced seven other candidates with the same name, there were five more candidates with names similar to his: Three Chandu Ram Sahus and two Moti Lal Sahus.

Multiple candidates with same name contesting for a single seat may or may not be a mere coincidence. In a country with about 1.3 billion population, many people are likely to have a common name. For instance, an electoral roll search on the Election Commission of India’s) website shows that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has at least 53 namesakes among registered voters across India. Congress president Rahul Gandhi has at least 390 namesakes. This means, given that a large number of people may have the same name, it is possible that two genuine candidates of the same name are in fray. At the same time, it also means that if someone wants to field a dummy candidate, it may not be difficult to find one.

But in any case, the ECI’S decision to print photograph of a candidate along with his name and election symbol on the voting unit can make it easier for the voters to identify the candidate they want to vote for.