MARGAO
In the battle royal between Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and Leader of Opposition Yuri Alemao to control Cuncolim in the just concluded Lok Sabha polls, the Congress managed to protect its fort from crumbling to sustained and strategic attacks by the saffron brigade.
Cuncolim was one Assembly segment which had come under the scanner of political observers in the run up to the Lok Sabha election. The reason is not far too seek. Here, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant along with social welfare Minister Subhash Faldesai made repeated presence to drum up support for BJP candidate Pallavi Dempo.
A host of meetings organized by the BJP leadership led by the Chief Minister and his Cabinet Minister indicated that the BJP meant business in Cuncolim. The ruling party appeared in no mood to allow the Congress a free run in the constituency as the party went about consolidation of its traditional vote bank spread across the Cuncolim Municipal area, Balli village, Paroda and Ambaulim.
Both Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and Social Welfare Minister Subhash Faldesai are not strangers to Cuncolim. The CM’s sister is married in Cuncolim to Cuncolim Municipal Councilor Videsh Desai, while Subhash has his roots in the influential and strong Desai community spread across Cuncolim and Balli.
Against this backdrop, political observers had attributed the Pramod-Subhash duo’s presence in Cuncolim in order to consolidate the Desai vote towards the BJP and polarize party’s other traditional votes to score big in the Assembly segment.
Take note, the BJP’s game plan nearly succeeded in the areas around Balli and Cuncolim Municipal area and to some extent in Ambaulim, but the consolidation of the non-BJP vote towards Captain Viriato Fernandes proved costly for the saffron brigade. While the BJP put up a good show in its areas of influence, the party had a dry run in the villages of Chandor, Guirdolim and Macazana, which paved the way for the Congress flag to fly high in Cuncolim.
This was evident by the fact that the Congress took an unprecedented lead in Cuncolim, a whopping 7,409 votes, the highest lead by the Congress in the recent Lok Sabha election history. While the Congress ended its hectic campaign in Cuncolim by polling 12,957 votes, the BJP had to be content with 7,409 votes, giving Captain Viriato around 5,548 vote lead.
A glance at the previous Lok Sabha election statistics showed that this is the first time that Congress has garnered a huge lead in Cuncolim. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Congress had secured a lead of 2,619 vote compared to a thin lead of 750 votes over the BJP in the 2014 LS election.
In fact, the election result will help the Opposition leader to prove a point or two not just to the Chief Minister Pramod Sawant but for his long time political rival, Social Welfare Minister Subhash Faldesai that he is still in control of Cuncolim.
For, there’s been no love lost between Yuri Alemao and Subhash Faldesai since they fought a bitter battle for the Sanguem seat in the 2012 Assembly elections, before the former lost the election by a whisker.
That’s not all. The repeated presence of Subhash Faldesai in Cuncolim had left tongues wagging that the Social Welfare Minister has set his eyes on Cuncolim in the event Sanguem is left reserved for the Scheduled Tribes post-delimitation.
A beaming Opposition leader Yuri Alemao told the media after the results were out that the Cuncolkars have shown the BJP leaders their place by giving a huge and unprecedented lead to Captain Viriato.
