The election saw 21 new faces in the 20 wards that went to polls and Margao-Fatorda-Aquem-Housing Board has definitely voted for a change in the Margao Municipal Council polls. Margao constituency rejected its four time MLA Digambar Kamat’s five candidates out of 11 despite stalwarts like Sushila Naik and Rosy Pereira being in the fray.
Kamat’s Model Margao won in 6 wards out of 11, a staking difference to Kamat winning 11 of 11 in the 2010 Municipal polls. “I had put out a manifesto and I admit, I lost five wards but those are close losses and there a lot of factors that read into those losses. I don’t want to look back but rather look forward and fine tune the city and meet its requirements of garbage management and ease traffic congestion,” explains Digambar Kamat.
“Sushila lost by a 63 vote margin, Rosy lost by 43 votes which are close margins. Our own party workers ditched us because they owe personal allegiances to the rival candidate and hence this kind of result happened. No other factors for their loss,” explains Digambar.
Rosy another candidate supported by him is involved in multiple cases of forgery and fake citizenship suits. “Digambar supported 4-5 candidates from the previous council who were inefficient while in my model I supported new faces and stuck to lets push out the old. Could be that factor of where he stuck to non-performing councillors is what brought his panel losing 50% of wards I feel,” analyses Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai who, unlike his coalition counterpart won 11 out of 11 wards.
The elated Adv Rajeev Gomes talks in stats. “Digambar lost in 5 wards out of 11 with his Model Margao campaign. In 20 old wards, 16 got new councillors. This means that Digambar’s politics and the inefficiency of the councillors were totally rejected and this is a good precedent that Margao has set,” explains Rajeev.
