Can BJP Deliver What Goa Voters Want?

The re-elected party’s big challenge is to use the mandate to trim debt and revive mining

- Rajesh.Menon

Goa just witnessed one of the most tempestuous elections in recent times and proving everyone who predicted a fractured verdict wrong, BJP got a decisive mandate to be in office for the third term. Contesting all 40 seats, the saffron party reached the half-way mark on its own – the second-highest number of seats in the party’s political history in the tiniest state.

Pramod Sawant comes of age

This election was also the coming of age of Pramod Sawant, whose appointment as CM in the wake of Manohar Parrikar’s death looked fortuitous and under whose leadership BJP went to the polls. Sawant battled dissension and sabotage, anti-incumbency, charges of corruption and allegations of cash-for-jobs, rising unemployment and misgovernance during Covid, to come up trumps.

In a campaign planned and executed by the central leadership through its Goa in-charge Devendra Fadnavis, BJP pressed into service its top leaders with Union home minister Amit Shah, for the first time, campaigning door-to-door in constituencies which appeared to be slipping away. PM Narendra Modi also addressed a public meeting, providing a booster dose to the karyakartas.

BJP was successful in convincing the voters, with the resources at its disposal, that instead of a divided opposition, voting for the saffron party with “double-engine” was best for Goa’s development.