MARGAO
Can Benaulim MLA Churchill Alemao manage to ward off a challenge from the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and protect his fort from crumbling in the ensuing Zilla Panchayat elections?
Churchill’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is in the fray for the two seats of Benaulim and Colva along the coastal belt. Political observers say the Benaulim MLA has a task cut out for him -- to ward off a spirited challenge from the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, which have fielded candidates for both the seats.
The ZP battle further assumes significance and comes against the backdrop of the fact that all the three players, the sitting MLA and the challengers, Congress and AAP, are positioning themselves for the battle of the ballot for the 2022 election.
In fact, the ZP election is billed as a semi-final clash between the three political parties before they go all out for a no-holds barred battle in 2022.
For some time now, both the Congress and AAP had been making their presence felt in Benaulim, taking up public issues, ostensibly to make inroads into Churchill’s fiefdom ahead of the Assembly polls.
In the 2017 Assembly election, the Aam Aadmi Party had made deep inroads in Benaulim, emerging as a challenger to the MLA, and relegating the Congress way behind in the scheme of things.
Incidentally, AAP’s Benaulim Assembly candidate Royla Fernandes is now contesting the Benaulim Zilla Panchayat seat on the Congress banner. AAP has fielded relatively young and new faces for both the Benaulim and Colva seats -- Hanzel Fernandes and Aishwarya Fernandes respectively.
No doubt, Royla’s candidature has received support from some of the anti-Churchill forces in the constituency, especially in Benaulim village. She has been a prominent figure in the ongoing agitation against track-doubling and coal transportation and the Save Mollem Campaign. Besides, she had been in the forefront in the campaign for the construction of the controversial Western bypass passing through Benaulim village on stilts.
The question that remains unanswered is whether the Congress can consolidate the gains the party made in Benaulim in the 2019 Lok Sabha seat and make a comeback in the constituency in the ensuing ZP election and position itself to challenge the sitting MLA in 2022. It also remains to be seen whether AAP improves its 2017 Assembly election performance and once again emerge as a serious challenger to Churchill ahead of the Assembly election.
Churchill has repeatedly played down the challenge posed to him by the Congress and AAP in the ensuing ZP polls. A seasoned campaigner, Churchill knows for sure that it’s not just an election for his candidates Menino de Bandar in Benaulim and Vania Baptista for the Colva seat, but the stakes are indeed high for him and the NCP, which has drawn up plans for the 2022 Assembly battle.
