In Goa, turncoats help BJP win a third successive term

TMC and AAP dented Congress rather than BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s corrective strategy of importing winning candidates from several parties just weeks ahead of the polls to blunt anti-incumbency of a ten-year rule paid rich dividends in the final count of the 2022 Assembly polls in Goa, where the party managed to garner 20 of the 40 seats, one short of a simple majority.

Of its 20 wins, 11 imports from the Congress, Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and independents, seven original BJP partymen and two new faces make the tally, including five Christian candidates. Several of the BJP's Christian candidates, who had defected from the Congress, were defeated by their voters.

An overcrowded opposition space also benefited the BJP by hitting the Congress alliance's fortunes, limiting it to 12 seats. In comparison, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) could finally, after eight years in Goan politics, open its Assembly account with two seats. The Trinamool Congress, which ran a highly visible campaign, drew a blank and was completely rejected by the voters here. Its alliance partner, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, saw both its vote share and tally reduce to two seats. Independents won three seats, while the firebrand nativist youth-based Revolutionary Goans Party picked one seat.

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That the split in votes benefitted the BJP is evident from its vote share that stayed the same 33 per cent both in 2017, where it won 13 seats, and in 2022, where multi-cornered contests saw it convert the 2022 vote percentage of 33 per cent seats to 20 seats, said analyst Cleofato Almeida Coutinho.

The BJP's strategic support to some independents also converted to two independent wins, as a BJP minister candidly told the media. The party has been saying it could take the support of independents to make up its numbers in government formation.

Upsetting exit polls that predicted a hung Assembly, today's final count also saw the reduced importance of the MGP, once Goa's strong regional party that ruled immediately after liberation for 15 years. The saffron MGP, dominated by the Dhavlikar brothers Ramkrishna Sudin and Deepak Dhavlikar, decided to ally with the TMC rather than the BJP, considered its natural ally, but found its role reduced from that alliance.

Counting was delayed, and recounts called in several constituencies where the winning margins were wafer-thin and kept oscillating, given the hair-thin margins that finally emerged. The Ponda Assembly seat was recounted several times before former Chief Minister Ravi Naik, who moved from the Congress to BJP on the poll eve, was declared elected by a few votes.

Chief Minister Pramod Sawant won his seat with a considerably reduced margin himself. Still, his win consolidates his position in the party, which had come to be covertly challenged by several aspirants. The BJP's win came at considerable compromise - it dropped key party leaders, including Utpal Parrikar, from its roster to acquire winnable candidates from the Congress, MGP, Goa Forward Party and independents, on election eve, sensing the anti-incumbency brewing against the party. "The BJP's strategy of acquisitions, mergers and expansion worked for it," said analyst Manoj Kamat. Atanasio Monserrate, the Congress-turned-BJP legislator, was able to deliver just two seats of the five he had promised, though.

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Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said the people of Goa were wise and had voted correctly. "It is a victory for the people of Goa," he said, while party spokesmen were attributing the win as one for stability and development.

However, the BJP's deputy chief ministers, Chandrakant Kavlekar and Manohar Ajgaonkar, who had crossed over in 2019 from the Congress and MGP, bit the dust, as did six other defectors.

Defections saw the Congress reduced to just two legislators on the poll eve, from its 2017 tally of 17. In Goa's personality-based politics, the Congress was already on a sticky wicket on February 14, having lost most of its stalwarts and constituency satraps to the BJP in three exodus waves. "With the number of Congress imports in the current Goa BJP, the 2022 election is actually between the Old Congress and the New Congress," GPCC President Girish Chodankar had quipped.

Forced by circumstance to field 31 new faces, and hoping its firm no-taking-back-defectors policy would work, the Congress was hoping to ride an anti-incumbency sentiment, but the sustained messaging by the AAP and TMC - that a vote for the Congress would ultimately benefit the BJP since it was apparently unable to hold his flock together - seems to have damaged the Congress' prospects. The TMC and AAP campaigns were directed against the Congress, rather than the BJP in Goa.

"Sadly, the TMC and AAP were eyeing the 2024 Lok Sabha poll rather than the Goa election, which seems to have been just a playground for them. They concentrated on the Congress strongholds and dented the Congress there. They seem to have succeeded in their game, but not to dismantle the Congress. These two parties are competing not with Narendra Modi but with Rahul Gandhi to lead the opposition space in 2024. Goa became a casualty in that tussle," says Almeida Coutinho.
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(Pamela D'Mello is a journalist based in Goa)