24 needy get funds to fix their homes in Mandrem

Assembly photo-finish encore likely in Ponda

Two of Goa's 14 civic bodies are in election mode. The polls to elect 11 new councillors of the 13-member Sanquelim municipal council (two have been elected unopposed) and 13 new councillors of the 15-member Ponda Municipal Council (two have been elected unopposed) are scheduled on May 5. At stake are not only the 28 positions in these two municipal councils but the political stature of two bigwig politicians -- Chief Minister Pramod Sawant in Sanquelim and Agriculture Minister Ravi Naik in Ponda. Both Sawant and Naik were stretched to the limit at the February 2022 assembly election in their respective Sanquelim and Ponda assembly constituencies by their rivals. Today, in the May 5 civic poll, they are again being challenged by the same rivals -- Dharmesh Saglani (Congress) who lost narrowly by a margin of 666 votes to Sawant and Ketan Bhatikar (MGP) who lost to Naik by an even narrower margin of just 77 votes. Both Saglani and Bhatikar have taken centre stage and positioned themselves as the main challengers to the attempts being made to capture power in the Sanquelim and Ponda municipalities by the BJP led by Sawant and Naik, respectively. The Goan assesses the political turf in these two municipalities and senses a possible repeat of the cliff-hanger 2022 finish although the Sawant-Naik duo may have earned the pole position due to the power trappings of the State government and machinery they control.