Team Herald
PANJIM: The Congress on Saturday put behind their 2012 defeat when the party tally had dropped to 9 seats and rode back to be in a position to make a strong bid for power. With 17 seats and the support of an Independent they had backed, the party is just three seats short of a majority.
BJP on the other hand slipped badly from the 21 seats it had won in 2012 to 13, and has one Independent it had backed taking its joint tally to 14. Voters sent the BJP top order home including Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, and Ministers Rajendra Arlekar, Dayanand Mandrekar and Dilip Parulekar.
Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), which in 2012 had aligned with the BJP, bagged three seats, though two of its outgoing MLAs lost, while debutante Goa Forward sprang a surprise bagging another three.
Nationalist Congress Party returned to the State Assembly with one seat, while three seats went to Independents.
It appeared to be a dream victory for the Congress after its big loss in 2012. Even ahead of 2017 elections the party had appeared to be in total disarray with leaders like Pandurang Madkaikar and Mauvin Godinho deserting the party to contest on BJP tickets.
GPCC President Luizinho Faleiro led the Congress charge winning in Navelim by defeating minister and independent MLA backed by BJP Avertano Furtado by 2400 votes. It was not just a victory for Faleiro but also added to his success as State Congress unit president.
Similarly, Leader of the Opposition Pratapsingh Rane won from Poriem and this term will mark his 50th year in politics.
Five Congress chief minister hopefuls – Pratapsingh Rane, Luizinho Faleiro, Ravi Naik, Subash Shirodkar and Digambar Kamat have won.
For the BJP counting day started with the shocker of the defeat of Parsekar by a huge margin. Parsekar resigned in the evening after having failed to steer his party to victory. He submitted his resignation to Governor Mridula Sinha as results indicated that BJP would fall well short of the halfway mark.
Most of the ministers in the Parsekar cabinet also faced humiliating defeats with six of the eight ministers in the fray losing, adding to the poor performance of the BJP. In a big setback for the BJP, its senior leader and Forest Minister Rajendra Arlekar lost to MGP’s Manohar Azgaonkar in Pernem.
The BJP, however, managed to retain Panjim, the former constituency of Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar who has won the seat since 1994. Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate got 6855 votes while Kuncalienkar got 7924 votes to ascertain his victory. Congress did not have a candidate in Panjim and had backed Monserrate.
Newly-formed Goa Forward Party dealt a double blow to the BJP as its candidates unseated two senior ministers in the outgoing cabinet. While in Siolim, Water Resources Minister Dayanand Mandrekar was defeated by GFP’s Vinod Palyekar, in Saligao Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar lost to Jayesh Salgaoncar, also from the regional outfit.
Industries Minister Mahadev Naik was defeated by Congress’ Subhash Shirodkar in Shiroda. Another prominent loser was MGP’s Pandurang (Deepak) Dhavalikar, who was sacked from the cabinet before the polls after his party severed ties with the BJP, just ahead of the elections. Dhavalikar lost to Independent candidate Govind Gawade who was backed by BJP in Priol.
Dy Chief MInister Francis D’Souza won by over a margin of 7000 votes from Mapusa against MGP’s Vinod Phadke, while in South Goa Churchill Alemao made a stunning comeback with a victory margin of 5191 against Royola Fernandes of AAP.
The biggest non-performer in Goa was the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which, despite an innovative campaign featuring musicians at street corner meetings, failed to make an impact with the voters.
Goa Suraksha Manch, floated by the rebel RSS leader Subash Velingkar, which contested the polls on the sole platform of denying government grants to English medium schools, also scored a dud. Velingkar has since returned to the RSS.
GSM had contested the elections in alliance with the MGP and the Shiv Sena, both of which also didn’t cause any large ripples.
