PANAJI
In what could be the last meeting of the current set of councillors of The Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) there was an eerie atmosphere even as Mayor Uday Madkaikar announced that new council which comes into office post the ensuing elections will have to go digital.
Madkaikar said the new councillors will get Ipads to work with and conduct their day to day affairs related to the CCP.
The term of the CCP ends in March and the elections are expected to be held in late March.
The civic body of the capital is controlled by Panaji MLA Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate whose panel had won the elections held in 2016 garnering 17 of the 30 wards.
However, since then, Monserrate has switched allegiance severally, first at the time of the 2014 bye-elections where he refused to support the Congress and was expelled from the party. He again joined the Congress and unsuccessfully contested the 2017 general election in Panjim but again ditched the party and joined the Goa Forward Party on the eve of the bye-election when the late Manohar Parrikar returned to state politics.
Following the death of Parrikar, Monserrate again joined the Congress and was this time successful in the bye-election winning it in May 2019 only to defect to the ruling BJP along with nine other MLAs in July of that year. Parallelly, the composition of the CCP kept shifting identically as Monserrate switched sides.
Currently, all the 30 councillors on paper owe allegiance to the ruling BJP and Monserrate is on record that the party will decide the election strategy, although sources said he will play the lead role.
