MARGAO
The BJP received a big bonus on Wednesday when the Lotus bloomed overnight in Margao and the minority stronghold of Nuvem, taking the tally of BJP seats in the minority stronghold to three.
What the saffron brigade could not do in Salcete in the 2022 polls when the party had opened its account only in Navelim and loosing badly in the remaining seven seats, Congress Margao MLA Digambar Kamat and Nuvem MLA Aleixo Sequeira did for the ruling party by joining the BJP on Wednesday.
This is not the first time that the BJP’s tally of seats has gone up in Salcete via defections. In the last Assembly, one had seen three Salcete MLAs - Filipe Nery Rodrigues (Velim), Wilfred D’Sa (Nuvem) and Clafasio Dias (Cuncolim) - quit the Congress to embrace the BJP along with seven other party MLAs.
In the 2022 Assembly polls, the BJP had put forth a strong bid to make inroads in the minority stronghold of Salcete by contesting all the eight seats at stake.
The party, however, managed to win only win the Navelim seat, where the BJP created history when the Lotus bloomed in the constituency for the first time in the State’s political history.
In other areas, however, the BJP failed to open its account, with the party failing to win and regain the seats of Fatorda and Cuncolim.
Salcete MLAs flirting with the BJP is not something new in the minority stronghold when elected MLAs had extended support to the BJP during the regime of late Manohar Parrikar.
However, MLAs from the minority-dominated taluka now seem to have no qualms in embracing the saffron brigade though records show that those joining the BJP had met their fate in the Assembly polls.
