Team Herald
PANJIM: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) general secretary Goa desk in charge Praful Patel is arriving in Goa on Thursday as the party has set into election mode.
The NCP had won just one seat in 2017 Assembly polls and wants to contest minimum seven seats in alliance with the Congress in the ensuing Assembly elections.
NCP State president Jose Philip D’Souza said Patel will meet party leaders, executive committee members and discuss strategies to win the elections.
“Unlike last elections, we are preparing for the upcoming Assembly polls and party wants to contest minimum seven seats in alliance with Congress,” he said.
D’Souza said there should be healthy pre-poll alliance of all like-minded parties so as to prevent division of secular votes in upcoming elections. The NCP is not averse to have alliance with Congress because both are natural allies in many States.
Though he declined to give the names of constituencies which NCP desires to contest, D’Souza hinted that the NCP wants four seats in South Goa and three in North Goa. He said that decision of pre-poll alliance will be taken by national leaders of both the parties and if talks fail then the NCP will contest the elections in alliance with other like-minded parties.
According to D’Souza, people of Goa are fed up with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and they too want all like-minded parties coming together to defeat the BJP. “We want to respect the feelings of these voters. We may have differences but our political ideologies are same,” he said.
D’Souza, who lost 2017 Assembly elections in his home turf Vasco Da Gama constituency has now set his eyes on neighbouring Dabolim constituency.
In 2007 elections, NCP in alliance with Congress won three seats but drew blank in 2012 elections. Benaulim MLA Churchill Alemao was the lone candidate to win on NCP symbol in 2017 elections even as the victory was considered due to Churchill’s charisma.
