CALANGUTE: In the Lok Sabha elections 2019, in North Goa Congress’ Girish Chondankar got around 10,151 votes in Calangute constituency compared to the BJP candidate’ 7,693 votes – a lead of 2458 votes. Chodankar being a new face found favour among those looking for a change.
Congress was sure of doing well in Calangute constituency, which has sizable chunk of minority votes. It was held by Congress up to 2012 when BJP’s Michael Lobo took control over the area.
In 2014 during the Modi wave and in spite of having a BJP MLA, the party still failed to attract voters. In Bardez it was the only constituency that saw Congress taking a lead. Political observers were expecting that the party will increase its 2014 lead and it did happen. Chondankar gave Shripad Naik a tough fight in this constituency.
Speaking to Herald, Calangute Sarpanch Shawn Martins stated that Calangute has always been traditionally a Congress seat even last time when they was a huge Modi wave it was the only constituency which gave Congress a lead.
“When it comes to ZP or assembly elections the people of our village votes for BJP and we win by huge margins because of the various development projects spearheaded by our MLA Michael Lobo,” Martins said.
Former Calangute MLA Agnelo Fernandes said that last year also they had taken lead and expected to do much better this time in the Lok Sabha elections.
“We would have got much more votes and taken a bigger lead in Calangute constituency. A lot of BJP supporters were fed up with Shripad and were deciding to support Girish. The mood was in favour of Congress definitely and we should have got another 4000 to 5000 votes if we had to convert these upset BJP supporters into voters,” Fernandes said.
