PANAJI
The dates for the much anticipated Lok Sabha elections 2024 may have not been finalised by the Election Commission of India as yet but here in Goa, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is already in election mode, well ahead of the Opposition.
The saffron party is already done with announcing its candidate for one of the two seats -- Shripad Naik for Panaji (North Goa) -- and has virtually completed its internal assessment work to pick one for Mormugao (South Goa) -- Chandrakant (Babu) Kavlekar, Narendra Sawaikar and now multiple names of women probables. All that is left is for the Central Parliamentary Board to pick one from this basket and announce the name.
The Congress on behalf of the INDI Alliance, on the other hand, has only just begun finding its feet. After having nothing to show in terms of its electoral preparedness, it did make an impression with its Thursday's show of unity along with its allies in the INDI-A bloc -- Aam Aadmi Party, Goa Forward Party, NCP (Sharad Pawar Faction) and Shiv Sena (UBT).
To borrow cricket parlance, it is safe to say that the BJP is padded up and playing on pitches in the nets while the Congress-led INDI Alliance, though padded up is still staying put in the pavilion.
ON FIRM GROUND
Over the last 25 years since it first won it in 1999, the BJP through Shripad Naik has never lost the North Goa seat, always relegating either the Congress or its ally, the NCP, to the second place in five consecutive elections. Most of these five wins for Naik were by handsome margins, except for in 2009, when he won by just 6,000-odd votes over NCP's Jitendra Deshprabhu in an era when the Congress in its 'UPA' avtaar nationally was still dominant. Also, the State at that time was ruled by a Congress-led coalition headed by Digambar Kamat.
Even before BJP came to gain an iron's grip on it, the North Goa seat has not been happy hunting ground for the Congress including in the era it was strongly ruling the State. It has just a 50% strike rate having won it just four of the eight times elections were held in 35 years between 1964 and 1998 -- Purushotam Kakodkar (1972), Shantaram Naik (1984). Harish Zantye (1991) and Ravi Naik (1998).
SOUTH STORY
In South Goa, the story turns on its head with past results showing that the Congress has a vice-like grip on the seat since winning it for the first time in 1977 through Eduardo Faleiro who won the seat for four more elections until his winning streak was broken in 1996 by Churchill Alemao of the UGDP. Subsequently Congress recaptured the seat four of the six times elections were held between 1998 till date.
So while history may back one in the North and the other in the South, for both the mainstream national parties the battle is not won or lost until it is fought on the electoral battleground and the votes are counted on the day of the results day.
Nonetheless, it is more than clear that the contest in both the seats will be confined to the BJP and the Congress, even if this time around there will be a new dimension in the form of Revolutionary Goans Party (RGP) who are fielding its president Manoj Parab in the North and Rupert Pereira in the South.
SHRIPAD IN FRONT
With a head start in the North Goa seat, where it has placed its bets again on Naik, the saffron party fancies his chances of clinching a sixth successive win.
For, apart from voter fatigue, perhaps, which many political observers say is a given with Naik spending close to a quarter of a century representing the seat in Parliament, most other factors which count in an electoral battle are working to his advantage -- the party is in power here, legislators in 18 of the 20 assembly segments back him, the party apparatus is robust and most importantly the party is flush with funds.
