Goa: A stab at stability
With victory in three assembly bypolls, the Pramod Sawant government inchescloser to a simple majority in the house.
They had won three assembly byelections on May 23, but the mood at the Bharatiya Janata Party office in Panaji was far from jubilant. They had lost the prestigious Panaji seat to the Congress after 25 years.
And this was within two months of their tallest leader in the state, Manohar Parrikar, passing away on March 17. The former chief minister had been representing Panaji since 1994, barring 2005 and 2007, when he was defence minister.
The bypoll wins have pushed the party closer to the majority mark in the 40-member assembly. The BJP has become the single largest party now with 17 MLAs, followed by the Congress at 15.
The BJP government, under Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant, is backed by three MLAs of the Goa Forward Party (GFP) and three Independents, taking the ruling alliance’s strength to 23, two more than a simple majority.
The Panaji assembly seat, however, went to Atanasio Monserrate. This is the first time since 1994 that the Congress has won the seat. Monserrate defeated two-time BJP MLA Siddharth Kunkolienkar by 1,775 votes, avenging the 2017 defeat by a 1,600-vote margin.
The win for the BJP’s Subhash Shirodkar was narrow, defeating Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party’s Deepak Dhavalikar in Shiroda by just 76 votes as Goa Suraksha Manch candidate Santosh Satarkar played spoilsport with 284 votes.
The BJP’s Joshua D’Souza retained his late father Francis D’Souza’s seat of Mapusa, winning by a margin of 1,151 votes. The third BJP candidate, Dilip Sopte, retained Mandrem. Shirodkar and Sopte had defected from the Congress in October 2018.
Goa BJP president Vinay Tendulkar hinted at the party’s plan to secure an absolute majority in the assembly. Two more Congress MLAs might join the BJP, he told reporters in Panaji after the election results were announced.
The BJP had managed to break two of the three MLAs of the MGP and merge their group with the BJP in the last week of March.
But MGP chief Deepak Dhavalikar thought it could have the opposite effecthelp the Congress form a stable government.
Congress chief Girish Chodankar says the party will remain united though the BJP is trying
to break it, again. The first challenge before Sawant now will be to secure the speaker’s post for the BJP, which he held before becoming chief minister.