Most of the Members of Parliament representing South Goa since the 90s had at one point or other tasted defeats in the Assembly or parliamentary polls before entering the Lok Sabha
L-R: Churchill Alemao, Francisco Sardinha and Narendra Sawaikar faced defeat in elections before going on to win the Lok Sabha polls in their careers.
Photo Credits: The Goan
MARGAO
Strange it may seem, but it's true that a defeat in the Assembly or Lok Sabha elections, has turned out a passport for many a politician, including heavyweights, to make it to the Parliament in the recent political history of the South Goa constituency.
While former Union Minister Eduardo Faleiro enjoyed a winning streak in the South Goa constituency for close to two decades, before his long innings was cut short by former Chief Minster Churchill Alemao, most of the Members of Parliament representing South Goa since the 90s had at one point or other tasted defeats in the Assembly or Lok Sabha polls before entering the Lok Sabha.
Be it former MPs Churchill Alemao, Francisco Sardinha, Ramakant Angle or Narendra Sawaikar, they all had to bite the dust in the Assembly or Lok Sabha elections before entering the Parliament.
Take the case of South Goa MP Francisco Sardinha. The Salcete political heavyweight had a virtual free run in his fiefdom of Curtorim, winning as many as four successive Assembly elections since 1977 before he suffered his first defeat at the hands of UGDP candidate Anton Gaonkar in the 1994 Assembly election. Out of political power for four years, the Congress party fielded Sardinha as the party candidate to contest the 1998 Lok Sabha election from South Goa. He made his debut in the Lok Sabha after overcoming a spirited challenge by sitting MP UGDP Chief Churchill Alemao and BJP’s Ramakant Angle.
Ramakant Angle lost the 1998 Lok Sabha seat by a whisker, by a margin of less than 10,000 votes, but the party re-nominated him in the subsequent Lok Sabha election in 1999 against Congress’ Joaquim Alemao, when the Lotus bloomed for the first time in South Goa’s Lok Sabha history with a margin of around 14,000-odd votes.
The 2004 Lok Sabha election saw another defeated candidate making it to the Parliament from South Goa. Former Chief Minister Churchill Alemao tasted his first defeat in the Assembly election from his fiefdom of Benaulim in the 2002 election at the hands of the flamboyant Mickky Pacheco. Churchill was picked up by the Congress as the party candidate for South Goa in the 2004 Lok Sabha election, wherein he defeated BJP’s Ramakant Angle by a massive margin of over 50,000-odd votes.
In the meanwhile, former Chief Minister Francisco Sardinha suffered his second defeat in Curtorim in the 2007 Assembly at the hands of incumbent MLA Reginaldo Lourenco. Sardinha was the Congress’ pick for the 2007 Lok Sabha bye-poll which was necessitated following the resignation of then MP Churchill Alemao from the Parliament.
Sardinha returned to the Parliament for the second time after winning the 2007 bye-poll and went on to retain the South Goa seat in the 2009 general election by defeating BJP candidate Adv Narendra Sawaikar.
Defeated by a thin margin of around 12,516 votes against Sardinha, the BJP leadership re-nominated Sawaikar in the following election held in 2014, wherein he made it to the Lok Sabha in style, defeating Congress’ Reginaldo Lourenco by a 30,000-odd vote margin.
