Sena, NCP declare tie-up, say Cong not interested
PANAJI/NEW DELHI: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Shiv Sena on Wednesday announced an alliance for next month’s assembly elections in Goa and added that the Congress did not respond to their proposal of fighting the polls together.
All the three parties are part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government in neighbouring Maharashtra.
Addressing reporters, Shiv Sena leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut and NCP leader Praful Patel said the two parties are also hoping for a post-poll arrangement with parties other than the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“We had thought that we should extend the MVA from Maharashtra to Goa. We thought that the Congress should play the major role and we (NCP and Shiv Sena) would contest some seats,” Patel said.
“Up to 2012, Congress used to leave seven seats for the NCP in Goa. So, Sanjay Raut made a similar offer. We even conceded that the Congress will be the main party in fighting the elections jointly. To this proposal of ours, they never said no, but they never said yes… they never gave us an adequate number of seats or spoke of seats we were strong or capable of contesting, so it was an exercise where we felt the Congress was not giving us the due respect which we deserve,” he added.
Patel continued: “I wish the Congress would have appreciated the larger picture and accommodated all the likeminded parties.”
“We (Sena and NCP) had tried to make an alliance like the MVA in Goa too. But we did not get any positive response from the Congress,” Raut said. The two parties are looking at contesting around a dozen of the 40 assembly seats in the upcoming polls.
“In Goa, there is a lot of confusion on the ground. There’s BJP, Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and other parties and in this overall confusion, the NCP and Shiv Sena thought that though we may not be in a position to form a government, we will have a respectable number of seats and can play an important role in the formation of the government,” Raut said.
“We will decide on the seat arrangement and the list of candidates in the next few days,” he added. The state NCP leadership is hopeful of signing a poll pact with the Congress, with party leader José D’souza claiming that talks remained stalled after initial progress in the matter.
“Talks between the Congress and the NCP were not held at the local level but were at the central leadership level. We are not privy to the talks and the reasons why they did not work out,” Congress working president Aleixo Sequeira said.
Both the NCP and Congress had fought the 2012 and 2017 assembly elections together. The NCP’S presence in the state, however, has dwindled ever since it was reduced to zero seats between 2012 and 2017 and won only one (Benaulim) seat in 2017.
In 2017, the Congress had emerged as the single-largest party in Goa by winning 17 seats in the 40-member House, but could not come to power as the BJP, which bagged 13, allied with some independents and regional parties to form the government under Manohar Parrikar (now deceased).
The Sena, on the other hand, has never won a seat in the state despite contesting successive elections.
The electoral battle for Goa has become multi-cornered with the entry of Mamata Banerjeeled TMC and aggressive campaigning by the AAP. So far, poll tie-ups were forged between the regional Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party and TMC, and between the Congress and the Goa Forward Party.
Taking a swipe at Congress, TMC co-in-charge of Goa Sushmita Dev said: “Congress keeps complaining about the division of Opposition votes that will benefit the BJP. If that concern was genuine, it should have worked towards consolidating the antibjp votes in Goa.”