MARGAO: The Goa Forward Party appears to have accepted the fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Central Committee and more precisely President Amit Shah will decide who will replace Manohar Parrikar as the chief minister and has started work to emerge with larger numbers as and when the assembly elections are held.
Party President Vijai Sardessai said that Amit Shah is well aware of the situation in Goa and the disparate views of the alliance partners and this is an important admission as presently it is the central committee of the BJP that is deciding about the party in Goa.
In fact, sources revealed that Parrikar had objected to dropping Francis D’Souza from the cabinet not only because it was he who brought Francis into the BJP, but the two of them worked closely to develop Mapusa the city where Parrikar grew up and which is represented by Francis.
The Goa Forward Party has meanwhile been working to gain influence in other constituencies apart from the three that already has elected their party candidates as MLAs. The party has started work in four constituencies already.
GFP has already commenced work in Ponda, Cuncolim, Mayem and Canacona constituencies where they have also projected their likely candidates. In Cuncolim, Yuri Alemao, the son of former minister Joaquim Alemao who lost the last assembly elections by a whisker is promoted as its candidate.
In Ponda, the party has been working promoting Rajesh Verenkar as its candidate and Rajesh had polled quite a number of votes as an independent candidate while in Mayem constituency it is projecting Santosh Sawant as its candidate. Incidentally, Santosh was the Congress candidate at the last assembly elections.
While the party has started working in Canacona constituency, it has not yet identified or projected anybody as a candidate as there are two very strong leaders from Canacona in the party namely Mohandas Lolienkar and Prashant Naik with the latter being the most likely candidate.
Besides, the party has identified four other constituencies where they will launch their movement very shortly. These constituencies are Shiroda, Sanguem, Cortalim and Nuvem. While party leadership is tight lipped about who will be projected as candidate it is quite likely that sitting MLA may be the Goa Forward candidate.
The party is not likely to field a candidate in Shiroda at the bye-elections as party leadership wants the alliance to continue till the term is completed and hence will not upset the BJP by fielding a candidate against Subhash Shirodkar.
