PANJIM: The Bharatiya Janata party-led government on Monday consolidated his position in the State by winning the by-elections to the Panjim and Valpoi Assembly seats.
BJP candidates, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, retained their bastions, the latter with a massive margin of over 10,000 votes, taking the saffron party’s tally to 14 in the State Assembly and that of the ruling dispensation to 23.
Parrikar, who returned to State politics to head the coalition government, after resigning from the post of Union Defence Minister in March, won by a margin of 4803 votes, against Congress’ Girish Chodankar. While Parrikar got 9862 votes, Chodankar managed to get 5059 votes. Interestingly, Parrikar’s victory margin saw a decline, compared to the 2012 election, wherein he had won by a margin 6068 votes by securing 11,086 votes again defeating a Congress candidate. But his vote percentage remained the same around 63%
However, compared to the February 2017 polls, Parrikar’s victory margin was far more than that of Siddharth Kuncolienkar who had defeated Atanasio Monserrate by 919 votes.
Rane, who resigned as Congress MLA in March this year and later joined BJP, won by a huge margin of 10,087 votes, defeating Congress’ Roy Naik. The Health Minister got 16,167 (plus 21 postal ballot) votes while Roy, son of former Chief Minister and sitting MLA Ravi Naik, got 6,101 votes. The Valpoi MLA had won by a margin of 5678 votes in February against BJP’s Satyavijay Naik. Rane had got 13,493 votes while S Naik had managed 7,815 votes.
Rane, however, bucked the fall in voting percentage, by getting more votes with a lesser voter base
Panjim, with 30 polling booths had three rounds of counting. Parrikar was leading right from round one, maintaining a lead of over 2000 votes. In the first round he got 4290 votes, in the second round 4914 and 658 in the third round. On the other hand Chodankar scored 2252 votes in the first round, 2432 in the second and 375 in the third round.
Of the 15,538 votes polled, Parrikar got 63.47 percent votes (9862), Chodankar got 32.55 percent votes (5059), Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM) candidate Anand Shirodkar 220 votes and Independent Kenneth Silveria got 96. NOTA stood at third with 301 votes. There were no postal ballots.
In the case of Valpoi, of the 23,038 votes polled, 70.17 percent votes were in favour of Rane (16,167) while the Congress share amounted to 26.48 percent (6101). Independent candidate Rohidas Gaonkar secured 316 votes. Here too, NOTA was third with 454 votes.
Of the 23 postal ballots received, 21 were in favour of Rane. The constituency with 46 polling stations saw Rane dominating every round of counting. In very first round, his lead had already crossed 3000 votes.
While Chodankar faced defeat, he took everyone by a surprise by gaining 5059 votes, considering that he was a very new face to the people of Panjim.
Speaking to media after the victory, Parrikar claimed that the results of the by-elections were an endorsement of the State government which will give moral strength to the ruling coalition. “It’s a repetition of 2012. It’s the same (victory) percentage of votes. I am quite happy. The lead margin is 33 percent and it is a big thing. I have polled over 63 percent. Performance and connect with people are the factors that led to the victory,” he said.
