MARGAO
As the ruling BJP braces up for a post mortem on the Lok Sabha election debacle in Salcete, party leadership may have to grapple with a contentious issue “ the virtual drought in the minority strongholds of Nuvem, Benaulim and Velim, even as votes just rained in favour of the Congress, paving the way for Captain Viriato Fernandes’ election to Parliament.
Nuvem, Benaulim and Velim, which together gave an unassailable 41,219 vote lead out of the total 62,839 vote lead for the Congress in Salcete taluka, witnessed a drought for the saffron brigade in these three segments. In fact, while these three segments gave 41,219 vote lead for the Congress, the BJP had to be content with a meagre 9,084 votes in Nuvem, Velim and Benaulim, catapulting Captain Viriato in the driver’s seat, finally deciding the fate of BJP’s Pallavi Dempo.
What’s interesting to note is that the BJP had been finding it difficult to breach the Congress bastion in the last two elections. Despite Chief Minister Pramod Sawant taking personal responsibility of Benaulim segment as evident by his visit to Benaulim and the fishing village of Colva and not to mention Salcete’s lone Minister Aleixo Sequeira representing Nuvem, the ruling party seemed to have simply found the going tough in these three segments.
Records show that it’s not just in the 2024 LS election, but also in the 2019 election that the BJP had come a cropper in Nuvem, Velim and Benaulim, giving a huge advantage for the Congress candidate over the saffron party in the scheme of things.
Poll statistics show that it was only in the 2014 Lok Sabha, the first election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Nuvem, Benaulim and Velim had witnessed a surge of the BJP, with party candidate not only polling unprecedented votes, but successfully reducing the Congress tally, which in the ultimate analysis paved the way for his election to the Lok Sabha.
Sources, however, said it was not Modi magic that the BJP scored a few extra goals in Nuvem, Velim and Benaulim in 2014.
Fighting the polls under the leadership of then Chief Minister late Manohar Parrikar, who had returned to power in the 2012 Assembly election, the BJP had strategic tie-ups with local satraps, who were then all coalition partners of the Manohar Parrikar government.
For instance, then Goa Vikas Party MLA Mickky Pacheco had put his heart and soul in the BJP campaign in 2014, organising an mammoth and unprecedented public meeting at Nuvem, which finally resulted in the BJP crossing 5,000-vote figure in the minority stronghold.
Benaulim too, who was then represented by GVP MLA Caitu Silva, worked on the ground, holding village-wise meeting with BJP candidate Narendra Sawaikar across the Assembly segment. The exercise reaped handsome dividends when the BJP, perhaps for the first time ever, polled 4,433 votes.
The situation was no different in Velim, which was then represented by Independent MLA Benjamin D’Silva. The BJP polled around 4,859 votes, again perhaps the highest votes polled by the saffron party in any Lok Sabha election in Velim.
The downslide, however, started in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when the BJP’s tally of votes came down from 5,321 in 2014 to 2,525 in 2019 votes in Nuvem, from 4,433 votes to 2,414 votes in Benaulim and 4,859 votes to 4,153 in Velim.
The situation saw no major change in the just concluded Lok Sabha election. In Nuvem, the BJP polled 152 extra votes compared to the 2019 election. In Benaulim, BJP improved its tally of votes by mere 92 votes, while the party faced a deficit of around 252 votes in Velim.
