PANAJI
With the Congress nominating him as its candidate for the North Goa seat, former Union Minister Ramakant Khalap will be making a comeback to electoral politics after exactly 22 years.
The last election Khalap fought was in 2002, when he lost the May-June assembly election from Mandrem constituency on a Congress ticket to the BJP’s Laxmikant Parsekar. Since then, the silver-haired politician has not contested any election, either for the State Assembly or Lok Sabha.
This will also be Khalap’s fourth attempt to enter the Lok Sabha from the North Goa constituency. In his past three hustings, he has won only once in 1996 on the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) ticket and went on to become a prominent member of the Deve Gowda and I K Gujral governments with independent charge of the law ministry.
He lost in 1998 again on MGP ticket and in 1999 as the Congress candidate.
Shripad-Khalap rematch for North Goa seat after 25 years
PANAJI: On May 7 when Goa goes to polls to elect its two MPs, two of the candidates in the fray for the North Goa seat -- Ramakant Khalap (Cong) and Shripad Naik (BJP) -- will be facing each other for the same seat after 25 years.
In 1999, Naik who had just lost the assembly election in Marcaim to current Power Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavlikar, had gone on to contest the North Goa parliamentary seat and record the first of his five successive victories from the constituency. Khalap, on a Congress ticket, was his immediate rival then.
