Despite failing to reach the halfway mark of 21 seats required to form the government, the ruling BJP in Goa is all set to return to power with its 20 newly-elected MLAs with the support of the smaller parties. The results have come as a shocker to the Congress as its tally fell below the performance of the 17 seats it had won in the 2017 Assembly elections to emerge as the single largest party. The BJP with 13 MLAs then had outwitted the Congress by enlisting the support of the Independents to not only form the government, but lure even the Congress legislators to quit and join the party. At the time of going to polls in February 2022, the Congress was left with just two of the 17 MLAs it had won.
In the results declared on Thursday, the ruling BJP won 20 seats and the Congress 11 seats while its ally, the Goa Forward Party (GFP), bagged one. The Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) with whom the BJP might ally won two seats while the Aam Aadmi Party won two seats.
There was intense political activity after the exit polls predicted the likelihood of a hung assembly. Both the BJP and Congress have moved their MLA candidates to resorts to prevent poaching. The Congress high command had also deputed the KPCC president DK Shivakumar, to develop strategies for safeguarding winning candidates and also open negotiations with the smaller parties. “But the exercise seems to be futile as the party now needs to seriously introspect why it could not retain the seats it won in 2017. The results are disappointing,” Congress sources said.
The elections posed different types of challenges for the BJP and Congress. For the BJP, it was the first election, contested in the absence of former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who died in 2019 and in the shadow of anti-incumbency after a decade of being in governance. It was more daunting for the Congress, which had emerged as the single largest party winning 17 seats in 2017, when the BJP with 13 MLAs reached out to smaller parties to reach the magic number needed to form the government.
The Congress performance in Goa was also quite significant to the party unit in Karnataka as four out of the five election strategists, appointed by the party high command to oversee the campaign, were from Karnataka. Former Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President Dinesh Gundu Rao was appointed Goa desk in-charge of the party, while Legislative Council Congress whip Prakash K Rathod was the overall in-charge of re-organisation of booths and membership drive. The KPCC Research Department Chief and Educationist Mansoor Ali Khan was in charge of North Goa and Sunil Hanamnavvar was responsible for South Goa. Former Union Minister P Chidambaram was the senior election observer.
“The biggest responsibility after being put in charge of Goa elections was to rebuild the party from scratch. Our party MLAs had defected, the morale of the workers was low and the party organisation itself had to be reconstructed from the booth and block levels,” Khan and Rathod said.
Another strategy of the Congress was not to give tickets to any of the party's deserters and those who contested were made to take oath in a temple, church and mosque that they will not leave once elected. “This was to assure the voters that the Congress cannot be faulted for those who defected due to individual greed. It was the leaders who had left and not the workers,” Khan said.
Political Landscape: The 40 assembly seats are divided equally between North and South Goa. Caste does not play a major role in Goa politics during the elections, unlike Karnataka. According to the 2011 census, Hindus constitute 66.08% of the total population, followed by the Bhandaris (30%), Catholic Christians (25.10%) and Muslims (8.33%). South Goa accounts for the majority of the Catholic Christian and Muslim voters.
The Bhandari community is the largest among Goa’s Other Backward Classes (OBC) constituents, making up about 60 per cent of the state’s OBC population. After the Bhandaris, the next largest group among Hindus is the Marathas and the Scheduled Castes. Goa CM Pramod Sawant is from the Maratha community. The Gaud Saraswat Brahmins, which Parrikar represented are not strong demographically, but are economically well-off.
How the parties fared: There are many reasons why the Congress which contested 37 seats, three of them by its ally GFP to get more seats in South Goa — the local MP Cosme Francisco Caitano Sardinha — is from the party. The region has a large migrant population. Of the 4.5 lakh migrants, majority are from Karnataka, which is a neighbouring state. Former CM Siddaramaiah, Shivakumar and a battery of leaders campaigned in this region raising the issues of unemployment, housing and mining. ``The Goan pride is dominant in the state and the Congress created the right balance of promising to protect the state's heritage, culture and pride,'' Prakash K Rathod said.
BJP's election strategy of denying tickets to some of its sitting MLAs seemed to have helped in getting rid of the dead wood. Party's election in-charge Devendra Fadnavis had been holding discussions with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP). In the past, the MGP has allied with the BJP either before or after the polls but was left high and dry when it came to sharing power.
The BJP government's mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis and corruption was a major poll plank for their opponents. The Congress harped on how for the first time a ruling party was accused of corruption by no less than the governor. Former Goa governor, Satya Pal Malik in an interview with the media had said that he was shifted out of Goa for raising the issue of corruption.
In the last two decades, there have been only two occasions, when Goa state has seen close to a five-year term rule by a chief minister — when Parrikar was the Chief Minister from October 2000 to February 2005 and Digambar Kamat of Congress, from June 2007 to March 2012. In 2017, Parrikar once again became the CM but his demise in 2019 resulted in the present incumbent Pramod Sawant succeeding him.