Think fun, think rave parties, think sand, think waves, and you think of Goa. On this Valentine’s Day, Goa will be no different as its 1,156,464 voters will be spoilt with choice of political parties when it goes to the polls to elect the eighth legislative assembly.
As mainstream pollsters hand over the mandate to the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the national media must not forget that Goa’s political sands are unpredictable. There are undercurrent that are often misread. In the early 60s then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was surprised when Goa did not vote the Congress to power and instead went with a local party, and is alleged to have remarked: ‘Ajeeb hai yeh Goa ke log’.
Not First Timers
Besides the BJP and the Congress, a resilient AAP is again trying to make its mark in the 2022 polls. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) arrives as the new phantom menace.
AAP debuted in Goa during the 2014 parliamentary polls where it got 3 percent of the voted polled, while the BJP got 48 percent, the Congress got 40 percent, and the TMC got 3 percent. In the 2017 assembly polls, AAP cornered 6.3 percent votes as against the BJP’s 32.5 percent, and the Congress’ 28.4 percent. When it came to the 2019 general elections, AAP secured 5 percent of the votes, with the BJP winning 51 percent, and the Congress 43 percent.
The TMC debuted with the 2012 assembly polls, where it cornered 1.8 percent of the votes, as against the BJP’s 35 percent, and the Congress’ 31 percent. It did not contest in the 2017 assembly polls.
Between the two, the TMC and AAP corner about 10 percent of the vote share spread across the 40 assembly segments. But that was till established leaders, sitting MLAs, and upcoming leaders from the Congress and the BJP started making a beeline for the TMC and AAP respectively.
Happy Hunting Ground
Contrary to its name ‘trinamool’ (grassroots), the TMC’s presence in Goa is more on social media and other digital platforms. Its outreach is being handled by Prashant Kishor’s I-PAC with a battery of ‘political workers’ masquerading as surveyors who have fanned out primarily across traditional Congress bastions. The buzz, as confirmed by many veteran politicians, is that the TMC wants to replace the Congress in Goa; a Congress-mukt Goa!
From the first week of October, when it re-launched in Goa, to date, the TMC has engineered the resignation and inducted 150-plus Congress leaders in the state. The list also includes former Congress President Luizinho Faleiro under whose leadership Congress almost came to power in 2017, and a working president Aleixio Reginaldo Lourenco.
It might appear that the Congress is almost being wiped out in Goa by the TMC — the truth is otherwise.
Despite their modern outlook and open-mindedness to new ideas and experiments, Goans are traditional people. Congress leaders are of the view that the party has a strong base across the state, and in each assembly constituency there are die-hard Congress supporters who have not taken kindly to the many leaders who have defected to other parties. The TMC is now realising that replacing the Congress in Goa is not as easy as it once thought it would be.
The bottom line is that after the initial euphoria, the TMC is now emerging as a party of tainted, and warring alumni from the Congress who are not much different from the 10 Congress MLAs poached by the BJP in 2019.
Goa After Manohar Parrikar
The last two decades in Goan polity has been the Parrikar decades. This year will be the first election after his death where the TMC and AAP eye the anti-incumbent space as well as the space the Congress has failed to occupy since 2017. While the TMC has focused on the Congress for local leaders, AAP has had its sights on the BJP. However, quite like the TMC, AAP started with focusing on Congress’ Catholic bastion of Salcette in South Goa. Only, it was consistent (unlike the TMC), and has earned a hard-fought zila parishad seat besides importing disgruntled BJP minority MLAs.
In Goa, the Congress has been at the receiving end of political poaching — earlier by the BJP, and now by the TMC and AAP. This has not escaped the notice of the Goan voter.
Ajay Thakur is a Goa-based senior journalist, and was associated with the Congress’ manifesto for the 2022 assembly elections.
Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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