Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: While The BJP has already made its intentions clear – they want to win the South Goa Seat, after Home Minister Amit Shah Kicked-off the campaign in Ponda last week, the Opposition Unity in Goa seems to be a distant possibility as of now.
The Opposition parties – The Congress, AAP and RGP, instead of having a consensus candidate, are planning to fight the polls independently.
South Goa has been a bastion of Congress for a long time, but the split of votes has allowed the BJP to annexe the seat at least twice in the last two decades.
However, in the 2019 elections, Congress Candidate Francisco Sardonha narrowly scrapped through with a margin of fewer than 10,000 votes, thanks to Sudin Dhavalikar, who worked against BJP in Ponda, Madkai and Shiroda constituencies then after being unceremoniously dropped by Dr Pramod Sawant in 2019.
However, today Sudin is back in the NDA camp and will work for the BJP candidate.
While AAP has declared it would field its own candidate, RGP has always refused to align with Congress. Now, given the two parties’ vote share, the Congress candidate will have to slog it out to score a victory.
Rajya Sabha MP and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national general secretary Sandeep Pathak said on Friday that the party will fight elections on its own and will not forge an alliance with any party in the upcoming LS elections.
“When there are issues of national interest, we will collaborate with every person who is like-minded…but when it comes to elections, at this point of time, and I am saying with full sense of responsibility, we have a clarity that we are going alone,” said Pathak.
“The party has very strong chances in Madhya Pradesh. In MP, it has become difficult [for the public] to identify BJP or Congress. People are aspiring for change. In Rajasthan, the Congress leaders are fighting among themselves, and so are the BJP leaders. People are tired of this. In Chhattisgarh, there is rampant corruption under the Congress government. The coal extracted from mining is being distributed to Adani for free. In all the states, people want change, and the need for a new and honest alternative, and only Kejriwal represents that change,” he said.
Stressing that AAP’s constructive politics is the only option to defeat the BJP’s ‘negative’ politics, Pathak said, “BJP has only one identity left, which is to form the government by any means possible [Kisi bhi tareeke se sarkar banana]. Either before the elections, BJP tries to influence the result or if the BJP loses in polls, it forms the government by purchasing MLAs. But, BJPs purpose is not to serve the country. Its sole purpose is how to form the government and how to exploit the people.”
He added that voting for Congress was akin to voting for the BJP. “Congress party either gets fixed before the elections or it is sold after the elections [Congress party ya toh chunav se pehle set ho jaati hai, ya toh chunav ke baad bikk jaati hai],” he said.
Pathak said AAP will contest the 2024 elections in Goa for both the Lok Sabha seats and preparations for strengthening the party’s organisational structure in the coastal state have begun.
“People of Goa feel cheated. When they vote for Congress, the vote goes to BJP and when they vote for BJP, the vote goes to Congress. BJP got 20 seats in Goa [in last years Assembly election]…BJP bought more than half of Congress [leaders]… and their government came to power. What has the government been doing? Corruption is at an all-time high in Goa. There is a cut for everything. Their policies are such that there has been negligible employment since this government came to power. There is no industrial policy, no IT policy, no education policy or any technological innovation. Goa has become famous for how the MLAs are sold,” he added.
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