PANAJI
Amid speculations over the South Goa candidature for the Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party made a strategic shift by announcing it would include women aspirants for the seat.
While the shortlisting process is still not complete, three names -- Shefali Vaidhya, Suvarna Tendulkar and Vidhya Gaude have been doing the rounds.
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant stated this would be the first time the party will recommend women for the parliamentary seat from Goa, adding that BJP has often supported 33 percent reservation for women in state Assemblies and Parliament.
“The discussion for South Goa is ongoing… We had initially shortlisted five names of whom two voluntarily opted out. Subsequently, the party’s scrutiny committee forwarded the three names to the Central Election Committee. Now that BJP has always supported 33 percent women reservation, the high command suggested we give probable women candidates for South Goa,” he said while addressing a press conference in the party headquarters on Monday.
The party, he added, will look for winnable women candidates. “We have not shortlisted any names for now but winnability is the factor we are looking at. The names will be proposed to the scrutiny committee that will shortlist and forward the names to CEC for final decision,” he said.
The CM emphasized that the final names would be decided after consultation with MLAs, State leaders, party workers, and other stakeholders.
Reacting to reports that CEC rejected a few names from the initial list, Sawant clarified that Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar and former CM Digambar Kamat ‘did not show interest with the nominations’ owing to which their names were dropped.
BJP State President Sadanand Shet Tanavade, also present at the press briefing, said the process to finalise the names will take another 4-5 days.
Meanwhile, the core committee earlier in the day met to discuss names of probable women candidates.
Last week, BJP's Central Election Committee had endorsed Shripad Naik's candidature for the North Goa seat, a stronghold from where he has won five times consecutively.
Naik's name was in the first list of 195 candidates for Lok Sabha seats from across the country which the BJP officially announced in Delhi.
