PANAJI
Four political parties in Goa including United Goans Party (UGP), which was floated by Revenue Minister Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate on the eve of the 2017 assembly elections after expulsion from the Congress, have been identified by the Election Commission of India to commence the process of delisting them.
The process of delisting these "registered unrecognised parties" has been initiated as none of them had contested any of the Assembly or Lok Sabha elections held in the six years since 2019.
Another reason cited by the ECI was that their registered offices are untraceable. The ECI said it had launched a nationwide review and found many of the over 2,800 registered but unrecognised parties failed to meet some mandatory conditions.
In Goa, apart from the UGP, the ECI has identified the Goa Nationalist Party (Sattari), Goa Praja Party (Tiswadi) and Goemcarancho Otrec Asro (Salcete).
Monserrate had floated the UGP on the eve of the 2017 assembly elections after he had been expelled by the Congress while he was the Santa Cruz MLA for openly working against the the party's official candidate Surendra Furtado in the 2014 Panaji bye-election held after Manohar Parrikar resigned to become the Union Defence Minister.
Subsequently, Monserrate had contested the Panaji seat on the UGP ticket in the 2017 assembly elections but the party he floated had no link of any sort with the original UGP founded by Dr Jack de Sequeira and his associates at the time of the first assembly election post Goa's Liberation in 1963.
The Sequeira-led UGP had emerged as the second largest party in that first election after the Dayanand Bandodkar-led MGP. It went on to dominate the Opposition space for three subsequent terms until Dr Sequeira himself abandoned it to join the Janata Party to fight his last election in 1977, post the Emergency, an election which Sequeira won from Santa Cruz along with two others -- Madhav Bir (Panaji) and Justice (Retd) Ferdino Rebello (Cuncolim).
