Parrikar hopes to pick up two, enroute Modi’s march towards 272 seats
Congress hangs on to hope in South Goa, riding on the Church and Sardesai’s support
Congress has internally conceded defeat in North Goa
TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM By the time you read this Manohar Parrikar will be at the BJP headquarters in Panjim tracking the election counting from there. “I used to go everywhere earlier, but now I’ll be at the party headquarters”, he told Herald late Thursday evening.
So is it all over bar the counting that has allowed the Chief Minister to soak in victories in both North and South Goa? Hearing him, one would easily think so. “We are winning both, 200%. North Goa, let’s not talk about, but in the South, we will get a lead of 50,000 votes from the mining belt seats, which will be impossible to make up from Salcete and other places. Remember the voting percentage in Salcete was 7 % less than that the rest of South Goa”.
He, however, acknowledged that Mickky Pachecho of the GVP has helped his campaign especially in the Nuvem and Benaulim belt. ‘Even the AAP will get about 10,000 votes but not from us but the Congress”, the Chief Minister said.
Many admit in South Goa that if Reginaldo Lourenco was not given the Congress ticket, a lot of the Salcete votes could have gone to AAP.
Speaking to Herald on the eve of the results BJP vice president Dr Wilfred Misquita said, “We are confident of winning both seats – north and South”.
“North was a foregone
conclusion even before the voting took place. It will be totally one sided,” he argued, charging “If not for the interference of some priests, the Congress candidate would have lost his deposit.”
Congress President John Fernandes too expresses confidence of doing well, but said that they will do better in the south than the north. He admits there were shortcomings in their campaigns and promises to rebuild the party.
This seat was originally given to the alliance partner the NCP, and last time the Congress import into the NCP Jeetendra Deshprabhu had come very close to unseating the sitting BJP MP Shripad Naik. Naik contested this time too.
In the South the sitting MP, Francisco Sardinha was denied the ticket at the last moment and his bête noire Reginaldo Lourenco bagged it.
The South Goa campaign of both parties was racked by dissent with veteran politician Churchill Alemao contesting on a Trinamool Congress ticket.
The Congress got a much needed boost after the church issued a couple of guidelines that were perceived to be anti-BJP, especially as the Congress party infrastructure in the south had not recovered from the drubbing it received in the last assembly elections. If not for independent MLA Vijai Sardessai throwing his weight behind Lourenco and literally managing the campaign, that seat would have also been lost quite convincingly, even Congress insiders concede.
