PANAJI
Panaji MLA Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate on Monday re-asserted his claim that the ruling BJP will win all the five assembly segments of Tiswadi taluka at the assembly elections due in early 2022.
"I say that the BJP will win all five constituencies in Tiswadi taluka," Monserrate said, adding that the ruling party will emerge victorious in at least 25 of the 40 constituencies across the State.
All five seats -- Taleigao (Jennifer Monserrate), Panaji (Monserrate himself), St Cruz (Antonio Fernandes), St Andre (Francis Silveira) and Cumbharjua (Pandurang Madkaikar) -- may be held by the ruling BJP but it had to hunt and hound beyond the electoral battlefield to achieve that feat -- weaning four of them through defections.
At the 2017 assembly hustings, the BJP had won just two. In Panaji, Siddharth Kuncolienkar had emerged victorious, defeating Monserrate by a thin 1,000-odd vote margin. And, in Cumbharjua Pandurang Madkaikar had retained his seat.
The balance three seats in Tiswadi were won by the Congress -- Taleigao (Jennifer Monserrate), St Cruz (Antonio Fernandes) and St Andre (Francis Silveira).
Interestingly, Monserrate (Babush) who lost narrowly in 2017, backed out from contesting the 2017 Panaji bye-poll necessitated by Kuncolienkar's vacating the seat for the Late Manohar Parrikar to get elected to the Assembly after he relinquished his Defence ministry to become chief minister of the BJP-led coalition government.
But, in the Panaji bye-election held following the death of Parrikar in 2019, Monserrate reversed the 2017 result winning the seat on a Congress ticket and defeating Kuncoliencar. But in less than three months he was part of the 10-member Congress group of MLAs that defected to the BJP.
This victory in five-out-of-five-seats in Tiswadi claim made on Monday was also made by Monserrate some months ago but significantly comes at a time when a 'mood of the State' survey anchored by the Prudent News channel has shown the Panaji and Taleigao seats to be unsafe for Monserrate and his wife Jennifer, who is Revenue minister in the State cabinet.
The "Mood of the State" survey also depicts the three other seats of Tiswadi -- St Cruz, St Andre and Cumbharjua -- as 'unsafe' for their respective sitting BJP MLAs: Antonio Fernandes, Francis Silveira and Pandurang Madkaikar.
Monserrate however declined to make any comment on the survey and its findings.
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, however, said the survey has been done by Prudent and all political parties also conduct their own surveys.
"We will go by the findings of our own surveys," Sawant said.
