Compared to the relatively binary Lok Sabha poll campaign, which largely concerns re-installing Narendra Modi as the prime minister or electing Rahul Gandhi for the top job, the campaign for the three assembly bypolls in Goa, which are slotted for April 23, has been a much complex affair.
The candidates of the key political parties are campaigning hard amid a sense of frustration among the electorate. Two of the three bypolls in Mandrem and Shiroda were announced after two Congress MLAs Dayanand Sopte and Subhash Shirodkar quit the party and joined the BJP last year.
The third bypoll in Mapusa has been necessitated following the death of former deputy chief minister Francis D'Souza, where the BJP has nominated his son, Joshua, as its candidate.
Joshua faces a battle against one of his father's closest aides, Sudhir Kandolkar, who recently quit the BJP and is contesting on a Congress ticket.
The BJP candidate concedes that the fight is tough. "It will be a good contest. Kandolkar is a good candidate and despite being an opponent, he is a close friend of the family," Joshua said.
Mandrem
The contest in Mandrem is shaping up as a three-corner battle between the BJP's Sopte, Congress' Babi Bagkar and Jeet Arolkar, an independent candidate with an 'X' factor, who seems to be drawing crowds to his expansive campaign.
The role of ex-chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar, who almost revolted against the BJP for allotting his assembly seat to Sopte and has refused to campaign for his own party in his constituency, would be crucial to the BJP's performance here. So is the role of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), which has opted out of its alliance with the BJP recently.
Battle Royale
But the battle royale among the three bypolls would be the contest at Shiroda, in which two parties, who are recent foes and known for their Hindu conservative appeal, the BJP and the MGP slug it out.
MGP state president Deepak Dhavalikar, whose insistence on contesting the seat, led to the eventual fissures in the BJP-MGP coalition, is taking on BJP's Subhash Shirodkar, with the Congress leadership appearing to have thrown their weight behind MGP, rather than its own candidate Mahadev Naik.
The bypolls are important because their outcome will decide the fate of the Pramod Sawant-led coalition government. Both the Congress and the BJP are tied at 14 seats in the state assembly which has been reduced to 36 seats, following deaths of two MLAs (including Manohar Parrikar on March 17) and resignations by two.