Panaji: Goa will go to the polls for the 40 Assembly seats in a single phase today. The incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is being challenged by Congress, Trinamool Congress and Aam Admi Party (AAP) in a multi-cornered electoral contest in this beach state. Today's polls will decide the fate of 301 candidates who are in the fray for 40 Assembly seats. T
The polling begins at 7 am today and ends at 6 pm. Covid-positive patients will be able to exercise their voting right by wearing PPE kit from 5 to 6 pm. Voting will be held today at 1,722 polling stations. Over 11.65 lakh voters will exercise their right to vote this time. The Election Commission has set up 105 pink polling stations exclusively for women. Everyone wants to take a selfie when the voters come out to vote. For this, the Election Commission has made a special Goan style selfie point.
BJP currently has 17 legislators and enjoys the support of legislators from Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Vijay Sardesai of the Goa Forward Party (GFP), and three independents. The GFP and MGP each have three MLAs, and Congress, on the other hand, has 15 MLAs in the house.
Apart from the traditional contenders - BJP and Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Goa Forward Party (GFP), Trinamool Congress Party (TMC), Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Shiv Sena, Revolutionary Goans Party, Goencho Swabhimaan Party, Jai Mahabharat Party and Sambhaji Brigade are in the fray.
Most opinion polls have indicated that no single party is likely to get a clear majority since the last four Goa elections from 2002 it was only once that any party crossed the magic figure of 21 in the 40-seat assembly. Any party forming the government had to take the help of smaller parties and independents.
In the 2017 elections, Congress had won 17 seats, while the BJP had bagged 13 but the BJP had quickly stitched up an alliance with some regional outfits and independents to form government in the state. Meanwhile, this time, the BJP is battling a 10-year anti-incumbency and is also the first assembly poll that the BJP is contesting without former chief minister Manohar Parrikar, who died in 2019.
List of Constituencies
Key candidates
The ruling BJP, Congress, Trinamool Congress and Aam Aadmi Party remain principal contenders for the Assembly elections in Goa along with Shiv Sena. However, Utpal Parrikar, son of former Chief Minister Manohar Parikkar, is also contesting as an independent candidate from his father's traditional Panaji Assembly seat. He had resigned from the BJP after he was denied a ticket from the Panaji Assembly constituency. The BJP has fielded Congress party turncoat Atanasio "Babush" Monserrate from the Panaji seat. He had joined the BJP along with nine other MLAs in 2019 from Congress.
The Panaji Assembly seat has its own importance in the electoral politics of the state. Former Union Minister for Defence Manohar Parrikar, who had represented Panaji, had been a three-term Chief Minister of the state. Goa witnessed intense electioneering by the top leaders of various political parties.
Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram along with the AICC in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao canvassed in Goa, seeking votes for works carried out by the Congress-led governments in the past, slamming political rivals for hampering the welfare of the people in the state. Goa Pradesh Congress Committee President Girish Chodankar also posted a video message for voters in Goa. He recalled works done by the Congress-led government in the past in the state. Similarly, several candidates of the BJP, Congress and TMC along with other political parties posted video messages, highlighting the developmental works carried out by them in their respective constituencies.
Meanwhile, AAP national convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also promised cash assistance for every woman above the age of 18 years and other benefits for many communities if his party came to power in the state. Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray on Saturday highlighted that the model of good governance in Maharashtra should be replicated in all other states. The AAP has declared lawyer turned politician Amit Palekar as its Chief Ministerial face for the Goa Assembly polls.
READ: Goa polls: No single party likely to get a clear majority, indicate opinion polls
