PANAJI
Monday’s results of the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) once again buttressed the electoral prowess of Panaji MLA Atanasio (Babush) Monserratte with his BJP-backed Together for Progressive Panaji panel winning 25 of the 30 wards.
The united opposition front ‘Ami Ponjekar’ on the other hand managed to win just four seats while a lone seat was won by an unattached independent candidate.
Former mayor Surendra Furtado who led ‘Ami Ponjekar’ won a record seventh term as a councillor winning a tough contest in Ward 6 by a 57-vote margin over incumbent Kishore Shastry.
Furtado’s wife Ruth also retained her Ward 9 with a wafer-thin
10-vote win over another sitting councillor Soraya Makhija who had to shift due to delimitation.
CONTEST CLOSE IN SEVERAL WARDS
Meanwhile, the contest in several wards was fierce and in one, just a solitary vote separated the winner from the loser.
In Ward no 25, the candidate from Monserrate’s panel Sanjeev Naik secured 315 votes while his opponent Vasudev Manerkar got 314 votes.
There was tension in the counting hall until the last minute as the tally computed from the two EVMs pertaining to the ward showed 315 votes against Sanjeev Naik’s name and 313 in Manerkar’s name. There was one ‘postal ballot’ cast in the ward which the Returning Officer counted and went in favour of Manerkar reducing the margin to just one vote.
In Ward 9 Ruth Furtado won by a marging of 10 votes. Soraya Makhija secured 378 votes while Furtado bagged 388 votes.
In yet another Ward 13, Pramay Mainkar of the Monserrate-led panel won by a margin of just 21 votes. While Pramay got 367 votes, his opponent Nilkanth Chari got 346 votes.
Another keen and close contest was in ward no 27, encompassing the heart of the city was between sitting councillor Lorraine Dias from the Monserrate-led panel and Malisa Simoes of the ‘Ami Ponjekar’ panel.
Dias won by a slender 23-vote margin as she bagged 331 votes while Malisa got 308. A third candidate Fernanda Colaco sponsored by the Congress despite being part of the ‘Ami Ponnjekar’ panel cornered 88 votes.
5 INCUMBENTS LOSE
Interestingly, five sitting corporators, including four from the Monserrate-led panel lost the election -- Kishore Shastry, Rahul Lotlikar, Soraya Makhija, Shekhar Degvekar, and Rupesh Halarnkar (Independent).
CABRAL, PO MAKE COMEBACKS
Nelson Cabral, an archrival of Monserrate who fought a High Court battle to retain his voting and contesting right after his was among 60 names deleted from the CCP jurisdiction erroneously, made a comeback after nearly 15 years. Cabral won from Ward 1 as a candidate of ‘Ami Ponnjekar’.
Another notable candidate who made a comeback to the CCP after five years away from politics was former mayor, Carolina Po. She won from Ward 4 as a candidate of the Monserrate-led panel defeating another former corporator Bharati Heble of the ‘Ami Ponnjekar’ panel.
