“What makes this failure more frustrating is that the lessons are not new. The Congress has lost Goa multiple times not because it lacked votes, but because it lacked strategy. Time and again, post-poll chaos, defections and an absence of organisational grip have handed power to the BJP. Yet, before every election, the party behaves as if history will somehow be kinder this time.
The BJP, on the other hand, understands the basics. It invests in booth-level organisation, builds alliances pragmatically, and never leaves political space vacant. It does not wait for election dates to be announced. It campaigns continuously, shaping narratives long before ballots are printed. By the time polling arrives, the contest is often already decided.”
If elections were a craft, the BJP has turned it into an assembly line. It is always in election mode, always prepared, always ruthless in converting organisation into votes. The Opposition, especially the Congress, continues to behave like a part-time player, waking up too late and blaming circumstances when the results go against it.
Goa is once again a case study in political self-sabotage.
By denying an alliance with the Revolutionary Goans Party and failing to even seriously approach the Aam Aadmi Party, the Congress has not only lost another election in the state but also squandered what little credibility it had left among voters. Politics is ultimately about perception. When a party repeatedly appears indecisive, arrogant or disconnected from ground realities, people stop listening.
The announcement of the Zilla Panchayat elections today underlines this failure starkly. The BJP is sweeping seats with ease, while the Congress is struggling to even reach double digits. This is not a sudden collapse. It is the predictable outcome of years of strategic laziness and internal confusion.
The Congress-Goa Forward alliance was supposed to be a corrective after previous miscalculations. Instead, it has failed to make any meaningful impact. It neither energised cadres nor convinced voters that it represented a credible alternative. Goa Forward, once projected as a regional force that could tilt the balance, now appears reduced to a supporting act without influence.
At the same time, the RGP and AAP will have to repent their decision to go alone against the BJP. Idealism and ambition are not substitutes for arithmetic. Fighting the BJP in isolation, without a larger Opposition framework, is not courage. It is political vanity. The BJP thrives when its opponents fragment the anti-incumbency vote, and Goa has repeatedly shown how devastating that fragmentation can be.
What makes this failure more frustrating is that the lessons are not new. The Congress has lost Goa multiple times not because it lacked votes, but because it lacked strategy. Time and again, post-poll chaos, defections and an absence of organisational grip have handed power to the BJP. Yet, before every election, the party behaves as if history will somehow be kinder this time.
The BJP, on the other hand, understands the basics. It invests in booth-level organisation, builds alliances pragmatically, and never leaves political space vacant. It does not wait for election dates to be announced. It campaigns continuously, shaping narratives long before ballots are printed. By the time polling arrives, the contest is often already decided.
The Opposition still seems trapped in a mindset where elections are events rather than processes. Decisions on alliances are delayed, negotiations are driven by ego, and local leadership is ignored in favour of high-command calculations that rarely match ground reality. Goa’s politics is intimate and local. Parties that fail to respect this inevitably lose.
There is also a deeper problem of trust. Voters no longer believe that the Congress can protect its own mandate even if elected. The memory of MLAs switching sides with impunity has not faded. Until the party confronts this credibility crisis head-on, alliances alone will not save it.
For the Opposition as a whole, Goa should be a warning, not just a post-mortem. The BJP does not win only because it is strong. It wins because its opponents repeatedly choose disunity, complacency and short-term thinking. Every election lost due to avoidable fragmentation strengthens the perception that the BJP is invincible, even when it is not.
If the Congress and other Opposition parties do not learn now, they may soon find that the question is no longer why they keep losing elections, but whether voters still see them as relevant at all.
