How people and parties let the BJP win Goa

RGP managed to win one seat of St Andre with Viresh Borkar. Pic/ANI

New political parties and the split in votes for opposition parties led to the victory of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) despite anti-incumbency for the past 10 years in Goa. The BJP managed to secure 33.3 % votes and opposition parties including the Congress got 66.7% votes. The Congress's internal assessment says that the major damage was caused by the newly launched Revolutionary Goan Party (RGP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

Chief Minister Pramod Sawant won by a margin of 666 votes defeating the Congress candidate. Pic/PTI

The RGP, which contested 38 of the 40 seats, managed to win 1 seat of St Andre with Viresh Borkar winning by a margin of just 76 votes. It defeated the BJP's Francisco Silveira. According to the data on the website of the election commission, the party also caused serious damage to 7 other seats which could have gone to the Congress. The RGP managed to secure over 2,000 votes on many seats.

How RGP's misses hit

The party secured 742 votes in the high-profile seat of Sanquelim where the BJP Chief Minister Pramod Sawant won by a margin of 666 defeating the Congress candidate. In other seats such as Pernem and Tivim, RGP received 2,755 and over 5,000 votes respectively. The Congress ally Goa Forward Party lost to the BJP by a margin of 3,136 votes while the RGP secured 3,974 votes in Mayem. Other seats such as Priol, Shiroda, Velim and Curchorem saw a similar finish. The RGP contested with young candidates who mostly campaigned on social media, calling parties like TMC, AAP and others outsiders. Manoj Parab, the founder of RGP, was portrayed as the Raj Thackeray of Goa and taunted for allegedly playing politics on Goans. However in his various campaigns he said that he is not against migrants. Parab contested from Valpoi and Tivim and lost both seats. He received 5,051 votes in Tivim and 6,377 votes in Valpoi.

AAP ke liye

The AAP which got 6.77% votes, opened its account in Goa after losing in 2017. AAP won the Velim and Benaulim seats. In Benaulim Venzy Viegas defeated political heavy weight and former chief minister Churchill Alemao, who contested on a TMC ticket. In Velim Cruz Silva of the Congress lost by just 169 votes.

The Goa unit of Congress feels the loss was due to the major split of votes. "The people heard our voice and were against BJP's regime, but they did not get the message properly about the split of votes during the campaign. Hence they voted against BJP for other parties the way they wanted," Congress leader P Chidambaram said while addressing the press in Goa on Thursday evening.