MARGAO: While condemning the allegations levelled by BJP leaders against the religious heads for the loss of the South Goa Lok Sabha seat, Margao Block Congress Committee has charged that BJP is trying to camouflage its failures.
While addressing the media, Margao Congress leader Savio Coutinho and other members, revealed that immediately after the polls, all the BJP heads of the 20 Assembly constituencies of South Goa were given directions to count and verify only the number of Catholics and Muslims who had cast their votes.
The formula adopted by the BJP was to deduct 80% of the number of minority votes cast from the total number of votes and thereafter, reduce the difference by 10 to 15%.
“The BJP was under the impression that only 10 to 15% of the majority community would vote for the Congress, sadly, a huge number of majority community voters voted for the Congress candidate in utter disgust of the divisive agenda of the BJP,” Coutinho said at a press briefing along with South District Congress members Aneil Alvares, Lalan Parsekar, Anwar Naroo, Camilo Camara, Sujata Parsekar, Domnic Coutinho, Iftiyaz Sayed and others.
Citing details of the various statements made by the Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and BJP South Goa campaign in charge boasting about BJP’s victory in South Goa, Coutinho said that the CM and BJP leaders were so confident of their formula for calculations of expected votes that the Chief Minister even declared that the exit polls results for South Goa were wrong.
Coutinho alleged that for over a year prior to the Lok Sabha elections, systematic campaigns were conducted to polarise and divide the people based on religion.
“Goa has always been a peace-loving state and people preferred to live in harmony with each other irrespective of religion,” Coutinho said.
“If the minorities are not in excess in Margao, then how did the Congress poll over 10,000 votes,” questioned Coutinho.
Coutinho warned the BJP that when all the Goans strive to maintain peace and harmony, it should avoid driving a wedge into the harmonious state of Goa.
