The party’s South Goa MP Narendra Sawaikar sought to rationalize the results and dismiss the feeling that it had come out second best in the elections, and said that the BJP, MGP and GVP alliance had garnered 40 per cent of the polled votes and the BJP had won 18 out of the 34 seats it had contested.
“We won 18 out of the 34 seats we contested, the MGP won five of the nine and GVP won two out of five it contested. We polled around 2,04,000 votes, which is more than 40% of the votes,” he said
“This is not a reflection of governance or working of the government,” Sawaikar said, adding that this was a localized election fought with local strategies unlike the Lok Sabha or the assembly polls.
He, however, conceded that the party will “study where we fell short. We will have to amend our act and tighten the screws”, to find out which are the weak areas in the state for the party.The south Goa MP also said that it was the “thought (vichar)” of the government that it should devolve powers to the ZP members, albeit in a focused manner so the members can concentrate on specific works.
Defending the decision to hold the ZP polls on party lines, he said that since almost all states have ZP elections on party lines, they (Goa) too decided to do so with the express intention to stop the politics of convenience that was going on in the State.
“We will devolve powers as per the 73rd Amendment. The idea of these elections was to strengthen the democratic process and strengthen grassroots democracy,” he said.
The 2015 ZP elections, saw the ruling BJP and its coalition partners losing ground even in their strong holds. Surprisingly, just around nine months back the alliance had decimated the Opposition, in the Lok Sabha polls.
