PANAJI
Dominated in the past by the Congress riding on the Ranes and also the Zantyes, there is now a perceptible advantage for the Bharatiya Janata Party's Shripad Naik in the far east of the North Goa Lok Sabha constituency comprising the contiguous Bicholim and Sattari talukas.
For one, it is the home turf of the saffron party's tallest State leaders -- Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and his number two in the Cabinet Vishwajit Rane -- and secondly, all five legislators that represent the region either belong to the BJP or support it.
Thirdly, with Pratapsing Rane who technically continues to be in the Congress but out of active politics since he threw in the towel after five decades in 2002, the grand old party has no politician of any respectable stature from the region to shoulder the campaign responsibility and its candidate Ramakant Khalap will be left to revive his connect there from his Maharastrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) leadership heydays.
The geographically vast region which borders both Maharashtra and Karnataka accounts for a fifth of the North Goa constituency with five assembly segments -- Bicholim, Mayem, Sanquelim, Poriem and Valpoi. Four of these were won by the BJP at the 2022 assembly hustings and the fifth went to an Independent -- Dr Chandrakant Shetye -- who gravitated to the ruling party instantly after the election results.
Nonetheless, Naik failed to dominate and take massive leads in the five assembly constituencies in three of the five successive Lok Sabha elections he has won thus far -- 1999, 2009 and 2014 -- explained perhaps by the fact that at the time of these elections, the father-son Rane duo were with the Congress then.
This time round, how well Naik fares against the Congress' Khalap could be a matter of prestige for the BJP's top honchos at the State level, the Sawant-Rane Jr duo. It would therefore be safe to presume the top two leaders would walk that extra mile to ensure the home turf advantage translates into a big vote margin for their candidate on result day.
RGP THE THIRD FACTOR: The third player in the ring -- the nascent Revolutionary Goans Party (RGP) -- which has nominated its president Manoj Parab in North Goa has the potential to sully the equation in the Bicholim-Sattari region.
Parab hails from Bicholim and in the 2022 elections he had left several political analysts by finishing runner-up to Jr Rane with a sizeable chunk of votes in his kitty in Valpoi. While Rane Junior had polled 14,462 votes, Parab had ended up with 6,377 votes, an impressionable 23-odd per-cent of the votes polled.
Political analysts say Parab is likely to garner substantial support in the May 7 Lok Sabha poll, particularly from the out of jobs younger, aspirational section of the electorate in this region which could muddy the electoral arithmetic of both his rivals.
