Soon after casting his vote Goa Forward Party (GFP) President and Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai today said that Congress has lacked organisational response during the Lok Sabha election campaigning.
MLA Vijai Sardersai was addressing the media reporters after casting his vote at Fatorda.
“Congress is lacking organisational response in Goa, however, there is people’s response; BJP has overwhelmed the state with huge advertisements; there is public under current against incumbent BJP North Goa candidate; in. S.Goa there a sort of arising,” said Vijai.
This is what we have been saying and writing about, while the alliance partners of INDI have been doing the bulk of the work, the GPCC President, a businessman by profession, running a mining-related business had no clue.
Only yesterday in my column I wrote of this fact. Amit Patkae seemed to be fighting this election to lose. There was no energy as he sidelined all the experienced people in the Congress like Girish Chodankar, Sunil Kauthankar, and Janardan Bhandari.
He felt Congress was his private limited company and the election was a mining contract and tried to take all the decisions by himself.
What Vijai meant to say was absolutely right, the local Congress was “unresponsive”. Calls to the president from alliance partners on many occasions have gone unanswered.
A Congress leader says, “Patkar wants to show he can win elections on his own and try to impress upon the Delhi leaders.”
However, in this process, he has sidelined each and every experienced and seasoned leader of INC Goa. Shocking.
Fighting elections of such magnanimity all alone. We feel even people like Amit Shah and Narendra Modi would seek help from their colleagues to fight the polls but Patkar thought otherwise.
Patkar has to understand that this is not a mining business where he can load and unload trucks and get rewards. This is politics at the highest level and you are fighting the might of BJP which has a solid organisational setup.
Every individual in the BJP was given a responsibility and they were accountable for it.
Congress on the other hand neither had organisational setup nor accountability.
Was Amit Patkar batting for the opponent’s team? This is the question that many are asking within the Congress.
“We are powerless and toothless,” said one Congress leader on condition of anonymity.
He said that it is our luck that people are fed up with the current dispensation otherwise if it was 2014 or 2019 with a president like this, Congress would have been swept away.
Truly, the people and the alliance partners’ hard work has kept the hopes alive. While it seems like the grand old party has given away hopes in North Goa, South is going to be 50-50 as BJP has left no stone unturned to see that industrialist Pallavi Dempo wins the South Goa seat, despite it being the bastion of Congress for long.
The high voting percentage could be another breather for BJP as it is banking on votes of majority community.
SURAJ BNANDREKAR
Editor, Goemkarponn
