Two Karnataka politicians, closely linked and familiar faces in Goa, had their political fortunes at stake in the recently concluded Karnataka polls. One survived and the other fell by the wayside.
Yes, the national general secretaries incharge of the two principle political parties in Goa -- C T Ravi of the BJP and the Dinesh Gundu Rao of Congress -- were both in the fray. Ravi lost by over 5,000 votes but Gundu Rao made it through, by a whisker.
Gundu Rao retained his Gandhi Nagar Assembly constiuency seat after defeating his BJP rival Sapthagiri Gowda by just 105 votes. He served as the AICC desk in-charge of Goa and was the pointsman going into the 2022 assembly elections here. He also played a major role in frustrating the BJP’s move to engineer defections in July last year before the party eventually split in September.
The AICC however relieved him in November and gave the Goa charge to Manickam Tagore, when the Mhadei issue flared up following the Centre’s approval to the Karnataka government’s DPRs for the Kalasa-Bhandura projects.
In Karnataka, Gundu Rao has the shoe worn on the other foot and finds himself in a situation where he has to lobby for a ministerial berth himself.
