TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: As hectic campaigning for the South Goa Lok Sabha election came to an end on Thursday, managers of the two main parties, Congress and BJP, were busy assessing the fall out of the Churchill and Gawde factors on the fate of Congress’ Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco and BJP’s Narendra Sawaikar.
The BJP camp appeared confident that the Trinamool Congress candidate Churchill Alemao would manage to poll minimum 20,000 votes, hoping the TMC vote would help split the minority vote, especially in Salcete, to Sawaikar’s advantage.
The Congress, on the other hand, concede in private that the party would face the danger zone in the event the TMC crosses the 15,000 figure mark. But Congress managers appear confident that the TMC will not cross the 10,000 mark, hoping that the polarisation of the minority vote on the secular-communal debate would benefit Reginaldo.
Incidentally, the TMC candidate, who was caught in the secular-communal debate, has been trying to shed his spoiler image from day one. At Thursday’s Lohia Maidan meeting, Churchill again tried to allay apprehensions by saying he is contesting to win and not to split votes.
Both BJP and Congress camps are also closely monitoring the movement of tribal leader, independent candidate Govind Gawde. The Congress camp is optimistic that the party’s graph would certainly go up if Gawde makes deep inroads in tribal areas of Madkai, Sanvordem, Sanguem and Canacona.
Gawde has been moving with his dedicated band
of supporters in the tribal areas, literally giving sleepless nights to the BJP campaign managers. Political analysts say his presence would only end up in splitting the BJP vote.
The Congress concedes in private that the party would face the danger zone in the event the TMC crosses the 15,000 figure mark
