Team Herald
Ponda: Former Shiroda MLA Mahadev Naik, who recently joined the Congress, filed his nomination for the Shiroda by-poll on Tuesday. Naik, was accompanied by large number of supporters and Congress MLAs including Ravi Naik, Jennifer Monserrate, Wilfred D’sa, Clafasio Dias, Felipe Neri Rodrigues, Congress Youth President Varad Mardolkar, as he submitted the necessary documents to the returning officer Kedar Naik at the Deputy Collector’s office.
Stating that he has no strong political rival this election, Naik, while speaking to the media, claimed he was hundred percent confident of winning the by-poll. He further alleged that it was the BJP leadership that had worked towards his defeat in the 2017 Assembly election, where former Congressman Subhash Shirodkar won the Shrioda seat. Speaking about Shirodkar, now the BJP’s candidate for Shiroda, Naik termed the election as an opportunity for the locals to teach him a lesson for defecting from the Congress to the BJP for personal gains by betraying the voters. He also felt that BJP had no moral right to contest as he alleged BJP had purposely halted development in the constituency, causing hardship to the locals and engineering the aforementioned defection move.
Speaking about his own career, having been part of the Congress earlier, expressed his gratitude to the Congress president, local MLAs for his ‘GharVapsi’ into the party where he had worked for several years. Congress MLA Ravi Naik also reiterated that they are confident of Naik’s victory and added that Congress would return to power in the State and Centre after the elections.
