Congress, BJP gear up for 2022 Goa polls

Panaji: Under the spectre of Covid-19, the two national parties in Goa, the Congress and the BJP, are gearing up for the upcoming State assembly polls.

While the Bharatiya Janata Party office bearers and MLAs went into a long huddle on Friday under the leadership of its two national general secretaries BL Santosh and CT Ravi, the All India Congress Committee in-charge of the Goa desk, Dinesh Gundu Rao is expected to visit the coastal State in the coming week, to chalk out the strategy for the polls, which are scheduled to be held in early 2022.

State Congress president Girish Chodankar said that the Congress had already formed a shortlist of candidates for all the 40 assembly constituencies but underlined that none of the 13 MLAs who quit the party to join the BJP since 2017, would be allotted tickets. "Every time these party-hoppers have quit the party only to join back ahead of elections. This time though will be different. People will not accept their return. We have to win the trust of the people on this count. 70 to 80 per cent of the candidates will be youngsters and new faces," Chodankar said.

Ten Congress MLAs joined the BJP en masse in 2019. Speaking about the agenda before Gundu Rao next week, Chodankar said that the aim was to put the organisation in the "mood for elections". "We have carried out a series of protests against poor decisions of this government. We have also exposed the wrongdoings and acts of corruption. Now, it is time to change gears and get into election mode," he said.

The BJP on the other hand is confident of making a comeback, even as a senior official said on condition of anonymity, that the party was in the process of reconsidering Chief Minister Pramod Sawant as the party's face for the upcoming poll.