Cong reduced to one seat in its bastion of Salcete

Wednesday’s political developments unfolding in the State has reduced the Congress to just one seat in the party’s bastion Salcete.

In fact, the BJP followed by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will have more MLAs than the Congress in the minority stronghold. Post-defection, the position of the political parties in Salcete is as follows, BJP (three seats), AAP (two) and the Congress, Goa Forward and Independent Reginaldo Lourenco one seat each.

Perhaps the first time in the recent political history, the Congress tally of seats has come down to just one with Cuncolim MLA Yuri Alemao being the lone party MLA in the Goa Legislative Assembly.

In the 2022 Assembly election, the Congress had put up a poor show with the party winning just three of the eight seats at stake, including the seats of Nuvem, Margao and Cuncolim represented by MLA Aleixo Sequeira, Digambar Kamat and Yuri Alemao.

After the political developments on Wednesday, wherein both Digambar Kamat and Aleixo Sequeira teamed up with six other MLAs to quit the party to embrace the BJP, the party has been left with a single MLA in the minority stronghold of Salcete.

The only time when the party had put up a poor showing in Salcete was in the 2012 Assembly polls, when the party’s tally of seats in Salcete was reduced to just two, when Digambar Kamat and Reginaldo Lourenco managed to retain their seats.

Incidentally, the Congress regained its base in Salcete in the 2017 election by winning as many as six seats, taking the party’s total tally of seats to 17 in the Assembly. The party, however, suffered a major setback in 2019 when three of the party MLAs, Filipe Neri Rodrigues, Wilfred D’Sa and Clafacio Dias, quit the party to form a two-third group to join the saffron brigade. It’s another matter that all the three MLAs bit the dust in the 2022 elections.

Commenting on the developments, Congress only MLA in Salcete, Cuncolim MLA Yuri Alemao tweeted that he is trained to fly an aircraft and trained to navigate through turbulence. “I have responsibility to fulfill my commitment given to Cuncolkars and Goemkars. I will work hard with utmost dedication and honesty to live up to the expectations of people of Goa. God is great,” Yuri asserted.