the goan I network
PANAJI
Former minister and Congress candidate for the May 19 Panjim bypoll Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate will be filing his nomination on Friday, GPCC president Girish Chodankar said.
Also filing his nomination on Friday will be Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Valmiki Naik.
Monserrate and Naik had faced off in the 2017 contest and were both unsuccessful, losing to then BJP candidate Siddharth Kuncolienkar.
Kuncolienkar had pipped Monserrate by a little over 1,000 votes and Naik had garnered a verdict-impacting, nearly 2000 votes.
Meanwhile, the BJP which has not yet announced its nominee for the Panjim bypoll necessitated by the death in mid-March of former chief minister Manohar Parrikar, is likely to field either the latter’s older son Utpal or Kuncolienkar.
According to BJP state president and Rajya Sabha MP, Vinay Tendulkar, the names of both Utpal and Kuncolienkar have been recommended to the party’s central leadership. The party expects the Central Election Committee to announce the candidate’s name by this weekend.
The by-election on May 19 will be the fifth time in the last seven years that Panjim’s electorate will be voting to elect its MLA. On the four previous occasions, Kuncolienkar had won twice (2015 bye-poll and in 2017). The balance two elections were won by the late Parrikar in 2012 and in the 2017, bypoll after he returned from Delhi to take over as CM of Goa.
Monserrate contested just once on his own now defunct United Goans Party ticket and with the support of the Congress which did not field any candidate in 2017.
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