The general elections to the Lok Sabha must be held in or before May 2024, still a couple of months or more later. Yet as of today, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is miles ahead of the Opposition on the battlefront for the two coveted seats here in Goa -- Panaji (North Goa) and Mormugao (South Goa).
In fact, it was a fortnight ago that Chief Minister Pramod Sawant pressed the 'start' button for the BJP's electoral machine in Mormugao where he addressed a public meeting at Baina after inaugurating the police outpost there.
With Rajya Sabha MP and BJP State president Sadanand Tanavade in tow, Sawant thundered that the BjP would win the South Goa seat in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections with a lead of around 60,000 votes.
It happened to be the birthday of the BJP's Congress import Sankalp Amonkar and the presence of the ruling party's entire top-brass including former South Goa MP Narendra Sawaikar and former Fatorda MLA Damu Naik, was a clear sign that despite their political muscle and advantage over the Opposition, the BJP, like always, will sweat it out.
Sawant even laced his speech at the public meeting with the words : "I want to declare that the official canvassing for the Lok Sabha elections begins from Mormugao constituency."
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Opposition lacks inertia
On the other hand, the Opposition comprising mainly of the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) who have both taken the lead role in the affairs of the INDIA bloc here in Goa, are still engaged in seat-sharing negotiations and although credible political sources are hinting that the two parties will share the seats one apiece, there is still no clarity or finality to the deal.
At the local level, however, leaders of both the parties are making disparate claims. From the Congress side, both Goa Pradesh Congress Committee president, Amit Patkar and the Leader of the Opposition, Yuri Alemao, have publicly stated that the Congress will fight both the Lok Sabha seats. Their statements came days after the AAP's National Convenor and Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, who was on a three-day visit here along with Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, had said that his party was in talks with the Congress over seat sharing in Delhi and Goa under the INDIA umbrella.
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Thakare's bravado
On his maiden visit to the State after being appointed the AICC general secretary in-charge of Goa, former Maharashtra minister, Manikrao Thakare, held meetings with party leaders and workers for a couple of days in mid-January.
Before leaving the State, Thakare, who is credited with playing a role in the Congress' stunning defeat of the Dr KC Rao-led BRS in Telengana, addressed the media where he thundered: "We will win the Lok Sabha election 2024 and also assembly elections in future.”
Thakare claimed in the presence of Patkar and Alemao, besides South Goa MP Francisco Sardinha and MLAs Carlos Alvares-Ferreira and Altone D'costa, that the situation in the party is very good.
Independent observers, however, have a very different take on the state of the Congress party and its organisation, which is struggling to recover from the major blow it suffered when eight of its 11 legislators switched sides to the ruling party less than six months after the 2022 assembly elections. Thakare's claims of a win in the Lok Sabha polls, therefore, sounds more like election time bravado rather than any convincing electoral math or analysis.
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Organisational weakness
Thakare is no political novice and has acknowledged the need to strengthen the party's organisational apparatus in the State.
"In the coming days we will strengthen our organisation,” Thakare said, even as he argued that when leaders defect, it doesn’t mean that loyal supporters also switch.
His words carried weight because three days later, a 10-member Pradesh Election Committee was approved and announced by the office of the Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge.
According to a statement released by the Congress, Amit Patkar was named its Chairman with Opposition Leader Yuri Alemao, South Goa MP Francisco Sardhina, former Union Minister Ramakant Khalap, MLAs Altone D'costa and Carlos Alvares-Ferreira, Girish Chodankar, M K Shaikh, Dr Pramod Salgaonkar and Shambhu Bau Bandekar as members.
Simultaneously, the Congress also named Alvares-Fereira as co-ordinatior for the North Goa seat and D'Costa for the South Goa seat.
AAP's pitch within INDIA
Kejriwal and Mann, through their much publicised visit to the State did make a strong pitch for a share in Goa's electoral pie of the two Lok Sabha seats. The visit of both of the chief ministers to the State at the same time was, in itself, a strong political message ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, although the organisational strength of the.AAP is not any better than its ally in the INDIA alliance even if their legislative strength is almost at par, after the mass defection of eight Congress MLAs to the BJP in 2022.
The Kejriwal-Mann duo during their visit indulged in some high-optic manoeuvres by touring the constituencies of their two MLAs -- Venzy Viegas (Benaulim) and Cruz Silva (Velim) -- and show-cased some of their work there particularly the 'mohalla clinics' in Benaulim and the agriculture turnaround in Chinchinim-Velim.
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South to Cong,
North to AAP?
Even as the there is yet to be clarity on whether a seat-sharing deal between the two parties is on the table and sealed, political circles have for some days now been hinting at a 'one seat apiece' arrangement between the Congress and AAP, much on the lines of a similar arrangement in the past here in Goa, where in the interest of the national alliance, the Congress conceded the Panaji (North Goa) seat to its then UPA ally the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
As the Mormugao (South Goa) seat is held by its veteran Francisco Sardinha, it is unlikely that the Congress will accept AAP's claim for it citing that both its MLAs are elected from assembly segments which form part of the constituency and may, if push comes to shove, eventually concede the difficult North Goa seat, held by the BJP's Shripad Naik for five consecutive terms.
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Advantage BJP but
it's not game over
Both on paper, owing to its political strength from being in power here, as well as its rock-solid organisational structure right down to the booth level, there is no contrary opinion that the ruling BJP is clearly in pole position and way ahead of its opponents on the electoral battlefront.
So, is the battle for the two Lok Sabha seats in Goa over even before it's fought? Like all electoral battles, no election is won or lost until the last vote is cast and counted. For now, the BJP can with all certainty be categorised as the hare and the otherside the tortoise.
However, we will know only in May, whether the electorate will carve a moral to this Lok Sabha 2024 election story like the 'Hare and the Tortoise' story taught in kindergarten schools.
