PANAJI
There was anti-incumbency and resentment over the price rise and lack of jobs for the youth, apart from a number of other local issues.
Yet, in several assembly segments of North Goa, the local MLAs and leaders, especially Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, managed to brace these headwinds and garner huge leads for the BJP winner Shripad Naik.
But in Panaji and Taleigao, Revenue Minister Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate faltered on this count. In Panaji, the vote share of BJP’s Naik dropped by about 3 percentage points.
Additionally, the lead over Ramakant Khalap of the Congress, which typically ranged between 2,500 to 5,000 votes in his previous five elections, this time slimmed down to under 2,000 votes.
In his other pocket borough of Taleigao, currently represented by his wife Jennifer and where the Monserrate swept with a thumping majority in the panchayat election just a fortnight before the 7 May polling day, Naik’s vote share marginally improved, but the slender 536-vote lead over Khalap has raised many questions.
Political arithmetic often throws up a sum that differs from the one that mathematics throws up to one plus one. It perhaps explains why Shripad fared the way he did in this Lok Sabha husting in the Panaji segment where Monserrate and also his rival at the 2022 assembly election, Utpal Parrikar, were both on his side.
However, the poor chemistry between Monserrate and Parrikar, including their frequent verbal clashes in the media over the smart city mess adding more fuel to the fire between the two, disrupted the party’s ground campaign in the capital.
The bad chemistry has spilled over to their respective supporters, which explains why campaigning took a hit, a senior BJP karyakarta of the Panaji mandal told The Goan.
“Turnouts also dropped drastically. Many people did not come to vote because they were angry over the trouble they faced due to the smart city work,” the karyakarta said.
It explains the below-par performance in Panaji for this election, he added.
In 2019, Naik’s lead in Panaji had dropped to 2,284, but it was an achievement staying in the green as Monserrate was with the Congress and their candidate who had defeated the BJP’s Siddharth Kuncolienkar in the assembly by-election held simultaneously.
This time around, with Babush in the saffron camp, Naik’s lead over the Congress rival dropped further down to just about 2,000 votes, which explains the extent of the drop in support in the capital.
In Taleigao too, the BJP’s original setup has still been unable to digest the switchover of the Babush-Jennifer duo to the saffron camp from the Congress back in 2019, throwing Naik’s ground campaign into disarray and quite explains the slim 536-vote margin.
Clearly, Naik’s and the BJP’s below-par performance in Babush’s Panaji-Taleigao home turf is likely to have many in the party’s leadership with their eyes rolling.
