MARGAO
The Congress retained the South Goa Lok Sabha seat in style when party candidate Captain Viriato Fernandes carried out a successful surgical strike after repulsing a determined attack from the BJP to storm the Congress fort in a bid to regain the seat after five years.
Aiding and facilitating Captain’s victory is the Congress power house, Salcete, which once again strongly rallied behind the party, with the minority-stronghold backing the Congress candidate to the hilt, by giving to the Congress candidate an unprecedented 62,839-vote lead.
On the other hand, the ruling BJP could not match Congress’ fire power in Salcete. Even though the party led over the Congress in almost 11 out of the 20 Assembly segments, BJP’s total vote lead of 52,255 in the constituency fell short of overcoming Congress’ lead in Salcete, giving Captain Viriato a victory by 13,535-vote margin.
The INDIA bloc experiment seemed to have helped the Congress to avert a split in the traditional Salcete area. In fact, the party reaped rich dividends in the segments represented by INDIA bloc partners, the Aam Aadmi Party and Goa Forward party, primarily due to the consolidation of non-BJP votes towards Captain Viriato.
Apart from the INDIA bloc experiment, political observers say it was the silent majority of voters that came out to the polling booths on their own on the polling day that made a big difference to the Congress victory.
On the other hand, expectations in some quarters that the Revolutionary Goans Party will split the Congress vote in Salcete, after the regional party’s splendid performance in the 2022 Assembly polls, came a cropper after the RG candidate Rupert Pereira was left stranded midway.
On the other hand, BJP’s calculations to score big in the eight hinterland talukas and in Mormugao seemed to have gone haywire. Making matters worse for Pallavi was the fact that barring Madkai, represented by MGP supremo and Power Minister Ramkrishna Dhavalikar, none of the remaining Assembly segments gave 10,000-plus vote lead for the BJP.
A glance at the results shows that the BJP, no doubt, led over the Congress by polling impressive votes in 11 out of the 20 Assembly segments. However, unlike in Salcete where the Congress had a virtual free run in at least 3-4 segments, registering unassailable leads, the BJP had to be content with reduced margins, barring Madkai, which in the final analysis proved costly for the party.
Incidentally, the three Congress turncoats, Digambar Kamat (Margao), Environment Minister Aleixo Sequeira (Nuvem) and Sankalp Amonkar (Mormugao) hardly made any difference to the prospects of the BJP candidate. While the Congress, as expected, managed to secure a huge lead in Nuvem, the BJP was left stranded in both Margao and Mormugao, when expectations were high in the ruling camp that these segments would give huge lead for the party and add to Pallavi’s vote.
