Team Herald
MARGAO: Salcete sent some electoral shocks to the voters as it sent two AAP members to the State Legislative Assembly and Navelim voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party for the first time.
As expected Digambar Kamat of the Congress won in Margao, as did Goa Forward Party leader Vijai Sardesai in Fatorda. But TMC’s Churchill Alemao in Benaulim and Valanka Alemao in Navelim suffered losses. It was an embarrassment for the BJP when its deputy CM Manohar (Babu) Ajgaonkar lost the seat at Margao.
The big wins for AAP came in Benaulim and in Velim, where Captain Venzy Viegas and Cruz Silva respectively won for the party. These are two seats that the party had targeted and had consistently maintained that it could win. Though the margins were close, AAP now has two seats in the Assembly.
A big victory is for Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco who stood as an independent in Curtorim and won. This is a huge setback for the Congress which has dominated this constituency in the past. Lourenco was a Congress MLA till December 2021 when he quit and joined the TMC. He then quit the TMC some weeks later and decided to enter the fray as an Independent.
Former Congress MLA who had defected to the BJP also lost in Salcete such as ex-minsister Felipe Nery Rodrigues in Velim and former Nuvem MLA Wilfred Babashan D’sa and Cuncolim MLA Clafasio Dias.
New regional party Revolutionary Goans has also managed to chunk of the vote share in some Salcete constituency
Congress’s Aleixo Sequeira has made a comeback in the Nuvem seat, while the party retains Cuncolim, that was won by Yuri Alemao,
The biggest surprise in Salcete was in Navelim, where Ulhas Tuenkar the candidate of the BJP, who is also a ZP member won, but the constituency has gone for recounting and that result cannot be confirmed at the time of going to the press.
