MAPUSA
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which ran a much better campaign than the last time and received a sounder response from Goans failed to convert the goodwill into votes in Bardez.
In fact, almost all the candidates have done worse than AAP’s performances in its first attempt at assembly elections in 2017.
The State convenor of AAP, Rahul Mhambre, who carried out an aggressive door-to-door campaign in Mapusa, could manage to garner just 1,511 votes compared to the 2,300 odd votes polled by the AAP candidate in 2017.
Similarly, the Siolim AAP candidate Vishnu Naik had polled 1,800 odd voters in 2017 but managed to fetch just 893 votes this time.
It was the same story in the remaining five constituencies in the taluka where the party was relegated to the fourth and some to even fifth position behind a newbie the Revolutionary Goans Party (RGP) and new entrant Trinamool Congress (TMC).
One of the reasons for the party’s poor performance can be due to the presence of more political parties and the resultant confusion among the voters.
A little deeper insight also shows that in most of the constituencies the minority votes, which AAP normally banks on, have consolidated towards the Congress.
In fact, Congress ran a very systematic campaign urging the voters not to vote for AAP and other smaller parties to defeat the main enemy, BJP.
Take the example of Saligao. The AAP candidate in Saligao, Mario Cordeiro could garner just about 847 votes but the same candidate could fetch around 1,500 votes in the Zilla Panchayat election held a couple of months before the assembly polls.
Similarly, the AAP candidate in Aldona bagged just about 1,306 votes while in 2017 the party candidate had got 3,000-odd votes.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP ran an aggressive campaign promising jobs to youth, unemployment dole, free electricity, corruption-free governance as part of a series of guarantees announced in the run-up to the election in the State.
According to AAP’s former general secretary Pradeep Padgaonkar, the campaign management and the resources poured by AAP in this election were way better than in 2017, but the electorate did not favour the party because people wanted to defeat the BJP.
“Minorities did not want their votes to get split and therefore preferred to vote for Congress with the intention to defeat the BJP,” said Padgaonkar.
