Congress workers from Velim celebrating the party victory against the Aam Aadmi Party as the party retained Velim seat with a comfortable margin.
MARGAO
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) managed to salvage some pride by winning the lone Zilla Panchayat seat of Colva by a whisker. However, the party’s defeats in the remaining seven ZP constituencies of Salcete are likely to trigger serious introspection within the organisation.
The party leadership may well acknowledge that AAP’s performance in the 2025 ZP polls was markedly poorer compared to its showing in the 2020 elections. In fact, the contrast between the two polls is striking.
In the 2020 ZP elections, the Aam Aadmi Party announced its arrival on Goa’s political landscape by opening its account with a victory in the Benaulim seat. Beyond that maiden win, AAP also played a decisive role in altering electoral outcomes in two to three constituencies in Salcete, including Colva and Guirdolim. By emerging as a strong challenger to the Congress, particularly in its traditional stronghold of Salcete, the party split the non-BJP, secular vote”indirectly contributing to Congress defeats in those seats.
A comparison with the 2025 ZP results underscores AAP’s decline. While the party managed to retain Colva by a slender margin of just 73 votes, it suffered emphatic defeats in Benaulim and Velim”both represented by AAP MLAs Venzy Viegas and Cruz Silva in the Goa Legislative Assembly.
The party’s performance was equally underwhelming in constituencies such as Curtorim and Raia, where AAP volunteers had been actively working on the ground with an eye on the 2027 Assembly elections. In Curtorim, despite expectations of a strong showing, the AAP candidate finished a distant fourth, trailing not only the Congress nominee but also two independent candidates who emerged as the principal challengers.
In Raia, the party failed to make any significant impact, with its candidate polling around 800 votes and finishing fifth. A similar pattern emerged in Guirdolim, where the AAP candidate secured just 631 votes, failing to influence the contest in any meaningful way. Congress candidate Sanjay Velip won comfortably with 3,159 votes, defeating BJP nominee Gokuldas Gaonkar, who polled 2,404 votes.
This marked a sharp decline from the 2020 election, when AAP had polled close to 996 votes in Guirdolim”enough at the time to split the non-BJP vote and pave the way for a BJP victory over the Congress.
