The 2022 elections will be a litmus test for both the BJP and the Congress. In 2017, the Congress emerged as the single largest party with 17 out of 40 seats, while the BJP could manage to win only 13. However, in terms of vote share, it was the BJP which stayed at the top with 32.48% of ballots . This was 4% more than the Congress.
The regional parties – Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party and the Goa Forward Party – with three seats each, and the three independents played the kingmakers in 2017.
The BJP, which managed to form a government in 2017 with the support of regional parties, will hope for a clear majority this time despite all the odds.
The party will miss the services of one of its most popular faces in Goa – Late Manohar Parrikar, who passed away in 2019. Parrikar was the architect of the 2017 BJP government. So central was Parrikar’s role in wooing the regional parties that the BJP made him quit as the Union defense minister to take over as the chief minister of the coalition government.
To make matters worse, his son Utpal Parrikar has revolted against the BJP after he was denied a party ticket from Panaji. Utpal has quit the BJP and will be contesting as an independent.
However, it’s not just the BJP that is facing dissent from ticket-seekers. The ruling party’s principal challenger, the Congress, is also battling defects ahead of the elections.
In fact, the Congress in the state has lost as many as 15 of its MLAs over the last 5 years. Despite being the single largest party, the Congress was outsmarted by the BJP in government formation in 2017. The grand old party was dealt a further blow when 13 of its MLAs later defected to the BJP. The Congress also lost a senior leader and its former chief minister Luizino Falerio to the Trinamool Congress.
Badly bruised by betrayals, the party has fielded 31 new faces in these elections, of which 18 are first-time contestants.
An analysis of the past results shows that the BJP and the Congress have been the principal challengers in the state over the last few elections. However, while the Congress has managed to touch the 20-seat mark twice, the BJP has done that only once till now.
This clearly highlights the key role of regional parties in government formation in the state.
The BJP has improved its performance in the state over the years. In 2012, the BJP managed to beat the Congress for the first time in terms of vote share. Even in 2017, the BJP’s vote share was greater than the Congress despite the fact that the saffron party won fewer seats than the grand old party.
Multi-cornered contest
Elections to Goa assembly this year will be interesting – not just because the BJP and the Congress will once again try to outperform each other, but also because of the presence of Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in the electoral fray. The two parties have emerged as key contenders for power in the coastal state.
For AAP, this will be the second election in Goa. In 2017, the party had contested 39 seats, but could not manage to win even one. It came second in only one seat, while it was in the third position in several seats.
However, the party did manage to poll around 6.27% of the vote share, getting more than 2000 votes in 10 assembly seats.
This time around, the party would be hoping for a turnaround.
That brings us to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which entered Goa with a bang. Mamata stormed into Goa by not just poaching leaders from the Congress but also taking jibes at Rahul Gandhi and raising serious questions about the ability of the grand old party to challenge the BJP.
But, as elections approach, the Trinamool campaign seems to have fizzled out. The party has lost some of the poached leaders and
From aggression, it gradually moved towards conciliation and spoke of an alliance involving the Congress. But the Congress showed little interest in Trinamool’s “concrete proposal” of a pre-poll alliance in the state.
The other players in the opposition camp include the Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar and the Shiv Sena.
The NCP has very limited influence in the state and the Shiv Sena is a marginal player in Goa politics. The two parties reached out to the Congress for an alliance. However, the Congress showed little interest in their overtures.
In a state where victory margins are not very big, the division of opposition votes may help the BJP. In 2017, 11 seats were won with less than 2000 votes margin and 27 out of 40 seats were won with less than 5000 votes margin.
However, if the BJP fails to reach the halfway mark on its own, like in 2017, the opposition parties may join hands for a post-poll alliance to keep the saffron party out of power.
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