MAPUSA
The BJP may have a reason to cheer over its sweep in Zilla Panchayat elections in Bardez but apart from the Reis Magos seat, the victory at other places was hardly convincing while Congress which contested for the first time faced near total rout at most places.
The AAP which contested in four seats may have not done all that well but it definitely managed to get noticed.
The BJP was trounced in two constituencies at the hand of the Independents. It lost the Colvale seat that was held by them to the wife of its former MLA Kiran Kandolkar by a whopping margin of 2,075 votes and the Penha-da-France seat to the candidate backed by Porvorim MLA Rohan Khaunte by 1,678 votes.
In three other constituencies, Siolim, Calangute and Socorro, the BJP managed to secure a victory margin of just 395, 428 and 515 votes respectively.
In five constituencies “ Siolim, Calangute, Socorro, Aldona and Sirsaim “ the total votes polled by all the opposition candidates exceeded the votes gained by the BJP’s winning candidates, clearly indicating that a joint opposition could easily decimate the saffron surge.
The bright star for the BJP in the election was Rupesh Naik who re-contested from Reis Magos ZP constituency and won with a thumping margin of 3,060 votes.
The BJP may have snatched one seat from Porvorim MLA Rohan Khaunte by defeating his independent candidate in Socorro, but the saffron camp failed to dent Khaunte’s grip in the Porvorim assembly segment.
In fact, Khaunte’s candidate was leading in Socorro which comes under Provorim in the assembly elections while the BJP’s winning candidate got a big lead in Parra and Guirim, both of which do not come under Porvorim in the assembly elections.
Former BJP MLA and the Working President of Goa Forward Party, Kiran Kandolkar managed to seek his revenge by giving the high-flying BJP a shock of its life in its own den.
He managed to get his wife elected as ZP in Colvale by a big margin of 2,075 votes and making a match of it in the Sirsaim constituency.
His close ally, Anand Temkar, lost the Sirsaim seat only because of the Independents who polled a significant number of votes.
Apart from Calangute, where the Congress managed to walk with its head held high, the grand old party failed to impress in all other constituencies.
The party has fared very poorly wherever there were multi-cornered fights.
In four constituencies “ Penha da France, Sirsaim, Colvale and Siolim “ the party was relegated to the third position, while in Socorro it was pushed to distant fourth after the AAP candidate.
In a three-cornered fight, the Congress managed to corner the runners up position.
In four constituencies “ Calangute, Aldona, Anjuna and Reis Magos “ the party emerged runners up but that was hardly any consolation because except for Calangute where the party put up a good fight, in the remaining three constituencies it lost by a wide margin.
The Aam Aadmi Party which sought to test the waters in elections to local self-governing bodies managed to give a good account of itself.
The party contested in four constituencies and managed to poll more than 1,000 votes in Aldona, Calangute and Socorro, while finishing last in Sirsaim with 706-odd votes.
