Canacona MLA too joins campaigning
HERALD CORRESPONDENT
CANACONA, OCT 25
With campaigning for Canacona Municipal Council (CMC) reaching its pinnacle, Ward 3 (Mastimoll) is set for a straight fight, while voters in Ward 4 (Ponsulem) will be split between three serious candidates.
Interestingly, none of the candidates are leaving anything to chance, strenuously leading their supporters on a door-to-door canvassing.
On Sunday, Canacona MLA Vijay Poi Khot also stepped out and was seen canvassing in his parent ward of Mastimoll.
Mastimoll ward, in a one-to-one fight, is the parent ward of Poi Khot, who out of little or no option fielded his close confidante Premanand Gaonkar, after reservation of this ward for ST community that demoralized at least half-a-dozen aspiring general category contestants. A woman is presently representing this ward.
The other contestant is one Sandesh Gaonkar, incidentally, a voter, imported from neighbouring Chaudi ward, allegedly by a few unhappy aspiring candidates over ward’s reservation, especially when there are not even 1% of voters belonging to ST community.
Incidentally, Mastimoll has the highest number of voters, 1,460 males (742) outnumber women (718).
Even though the overall enthusiasm among the electorate is missing, Premanand’s canvassing group told Herald: “We are confident of polling 80% of the cast votes, besides we are taking a rally of over 400 voters on the last day of campaign.”
The group decried the opponent candidate as an outsider.
Even as other contestant Sandesh could not be reached for his comments, his supporters claimed that their candidate’s win is a forgone conclusion, as people are unhappy because of ST reservation, giving ultimate upper hand only to a lone family belonging to the community.
However, it will be indeed a daunting task for both the candidates and their close supporters to bring out maximum people to the polling booth to cast their votes.
In Ward 4 (Ponsulem), it will be a three-way battle for the seat, as the present incumbent in virtue of his being a mayor of the council, his prestige and position are also at stake.
Ponsulem has total strength of 1,133 electorates, males (570) and females (563).
CMC Chairperson Shamsunder Dessai, seeking re-election, was last time elected by a narrow margin of just two votes. More importantly, his major concern is that his last time’ bitter opponent Mahadev Dessai, is also strongly back among the contestants.
The other major factor is that there is yet another strong contender in Wilson Fernandes, whose community holds a strong say in the ultimate winner, which however, during previous municipal election was sufficiently exploited by rivals, are now poised for altogether tricky situation.
Sources informed that all three candidates in Ponsulem have equal chances, as few tense situations did erupted in the area during last few days, which even reportedly resulted in registration of a non-cognizable offence with police.
Door-to-door campaigning and banner cut outs in the locality makes up for the major campaigning strategy to win the seat by respective candidates.
