Goa Assembly Elections 2022: Road Ahead

Note: The original version of the article was published on July 21th 2021 in “The Daily Guardian”

The Goa Assembly elections are slated to be held in February 2022. The Indian National Congress (INC) emerged as the party with the highest number of seats in the 2017 elections. However, due to a post-poll alliance, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured the Assembly with then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who was sworn in as the Chief Minister for the fourth time in the state. In the two years following the elections, a wave of defections and a few deaths of major leaders were instances that affected change. The BJP is currently the party with the highest number of seats (27), while the INC has only five MLAs in the 40-member house.

The Aftermath of the 2017 Assembly Polls

In the 2017 Assembly elections, the Congress won 17 seats with a vote share of 32.9 per cent, while the BJP won 13 seats with a vote share of 28.7 per cent. Other parties won 10 seats, with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and Goa Forward Party (GFP) winning three seats each and independent candidates winning three seats. The Nationalist Congress Party got one seat. After the elections, the GFP and MGP, along with some independent candidates. joined hands with the BJP in a post-poll alliance. The NDA secured a majority.

The defections started soon after the elections, when a key INC MLA, Vishwajit Rane, son of Pratap Rane, MLA and former Goa Chief Minister, switched his allegiance to the BJP. As a result, the BJP’s strength in the house rose to 14. By October 2017, two more INC MLAs had announced their allegiance to the BJP. However, in 2019, following the death of Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and MLA Francis D’Souza, the BJP’s seat share came down to 12. Thereafter, Pramod Sawant was sworn in as the Chief Minister with the NDA coalition in majority with 21 seats.

After Sawant was installed as Chief Minister, two MLAs from the MGP joined the BJP, bringing the party’s seat share to 14. In March 2019, due to defections and the passing of some MLAs, by-polls were conducted in four constituencies. The BJP won three seats. Political analysts state that these by-polls reflected that voters in Goa elected candidates independent of the banner of the party they were contesting under. The only seat the BJP lost was Parrikar’s former seat, which was won by INC candidate Atanasio “Babush” Monserrate. After the by-polls, the BJP’s seat share (as a single party) was up to 17 seats.

A dramatic shift in party allegiance happened in July 2019, when a group of 10 INC MLAs in Goa, led by the leader of opposition in the assembly, Chandrakant Kavlekar, shifted their support to the BJP. This increased the strength of the BJP to a whopping 27 seats out of 40 (from 13 seats, when the elections were conducted in 2017). With this major wave of defections, the strength of the INC, which had emerged as the single-largest party after the 2017 Assembly elections, was reduced to five MLAs.

What’s Predicted For 2022?

The BJP currently has 27 MLAs in the Assembly. However, the road to winning the 2022 elections is going to be difficult for the BJP,The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic devastated the state, with a record-high number of deaths. People have protested against the government’s handling of the crisis, and noted the lack of financial and economic support to help them navigate the devastating impact on their livelihood.

Goa has also experienced a wave of growing protests against major development works planned in the state, including the decision to build IIT Goa in the eco-sensitive forested village of Melauli. Tribal groups have been fighting for their rights in the state — that such construction projects not only cut straight into their livelihoods but also spark atrocities against tribal and Adivasi rights. Additionally, intra-party tensions, including the escalating rifts between the Chief Minister and Health Minister over policy decisions are likely to impact the party’s success in the upcoming elections.

In April 2022, the GFP announced that it had quit the NDA. The party stated that the BJP has been introducing “anti-Goan”policies that affect the locals. Following this, last month, after a state executive committee, the BJP announced that it will be contesting the 2022 Assembly polls independently in Goa, “but options are open.”

The INC was left with merely five MLAs by 2019. Congress’ Goa in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao made a trip to the state in June 2021, with the aim of strengthening the organization of the party and preparing for the upcoming polls. Congress President Girish Chodankar stated that the INC will contest the upcoming elections with new faces, while keeping alliance options open. It is to be noted that the National Congress Party (NCP) national general secretary Praful Patel has ruled out creating an alliance with the Congress for the polls.

Another party that has promised to contest all 40 seats in Goa is the AAP. While the party received a lot of attention from the youth and media, it failed to have any impact on the voting patterns of the state. Last week, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced the AAP’s promises for Goa for the upcoming elections, including free electricity of up to 300 units per month. The party has launched its “Let’s Clean Goa’s Politics” campaign for the 2022 election, promising to replicate the “Delhi model” of clean politics in Goa. Kejriwal has also promised uninterrupted power supply in the state, as well as with free electricity for farmers.

Other parties such as the MGP and GFP, which were in the NDA, have ruled out any possibility of a pre-poll alliance with the BJP for the polls. Both parties have announced that they are open to a pre-poll alliance with opposition parties in the state.

While other parties are trying to woo the Goan voter base with promises of free electricity and preserving the “Goan identity”, the organizational strength that the BJP hasand the support it receives in the state are strong. With important issues, including the development projects and the handling of the COVID-19 situation, leading to dissatisfaction among the people, it is yet to be seen what impact this will have on the election results.

Shreya Maskara/New Delhi
Contributing reports by Damini Mehta, Junior Associate at Polstrat and Ajitabh Singh, Intern at Polstrat.
From Polstrat, a non-partisan political consultancy which aims to shift the narrative of political discourse in the country from a problem-centric to a solutions-oriented approach.
Read more about Polstrat here. Follow us on Medium to keep up to date with Indian politics.
Polstrat is a political consultancy aiming to shift the narrative of political discourse in the country from a problem-centric to a solutions-oriented approach.