Apart from being a multi-cornered fight with several parties in fray, Goa Assembly elections will be an interesting affair for another reason – as many as five couples will be testing their electoral luck. In case all of them get elected, they will form one fourth of the total strength of the 40-member Goa House. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which currently rules the state, has fielded two couples and also given candidature to one of its leader, while his wife will be contesting as an independent. The Congress and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) have given ticket to one couple each.
BJP leader and Health Minister Vishwajit Rane is contesting from Valpoi Assembly segment, while his wife, Deviya, has filed her nomination from Poriem constituency on BJP ticket. Interestingly, Poriem seat is currently represented by her father-in-law Pratapsinh Rane on Congress ticket. The Congress has given ticket to Pratapsinh Rane from this Assembly segment. Deviya Rane is contesting her maiden election. The BJP has also given ticket to Atanasio Monserratte from Panaji Assembly constituency and to his wife, Jeniffer, from Taleigao seat. While Jeniffer Monserratte was elected on the Congress ticket in the 2017 Assembly polls from Taleigao, her husband had won as a Congress candidate during the 2019 Panaji by-election, which was necessitated after the death of the then chief minister Manohar Parrikar. The Monserrate couple had joined the ruling saffron party in 2019 along with eight other Congress MLAs. Deputy Chief Minister Chandrakant Kavlekar and his wife Savitri Kavlekar are also in the fray.
While he has been given ticket by the BJP to contest from his traditional Quepem seat, Savitri was denied ticket by the party from Sanguem assembly segment. She then announced that she would be contesting as an independent candidate from that constituency. The couple had contested the 2017 election on the Congress ticket. While Kavlekar had won the polls and joined the BJP in 2019, his wife had lost the election.
Michael Lobo, a minister in the Pramod Sawant-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and an MLA from the tourist belt of Calangute, announced in November that his wife Delilah will “most certainly” run for the assembly seat of Siolim. Delilah, then vice president of the BJP’s women’s wing in Goa, launched her own campaign in Siolim in December, despite the fact that the BJP had discussed fielding former minister Dayanand Mandrekar from the constituency, the report by the Print states. When it became clear that neither husband nor wife would be included on the BJP’s candidate list in January, the Lobos resigned from the party. Michael resigned as MLA and cabinet minister, and the husband-wife team is now running from Calangute and Siolim, respectively, from the Congress.
When preparations for the upcoming assembly election began, at least four BJP leaders — Lobo, Kavalekar, Rane, and Monserrate — lobbied within the party for their wives to run, the report quoted party sources as saying. However, the BJP has stated that only one member of each family will be considered for election.
But the party’s initial list of candidates for 34 of the 40 seats raised some eyebrows because it included two couples — the Monserrates and Ranes. The Monserrates were both incumbent MLAs from Tisvadi taluka’s Panaji and Taleigao, making the BJP’s decision easier to defend, though it came at the expense of upsetting late Goa CM Manohar Parrikar’s son Utpal, who was eyeing the Panaji seat.
Parrikar is now contesting against sitting Monserrate as an independent candidate, and has said ‘a silent wave is in his favour’.
The Monserrates, who were Congress MLAs until they defected to the BJP in 2019, were instrumental in convincing a total of 10 Congress MLAs, including themselves, to defect to the BJP and have built significant influence in four of Tisvadi taluka’s five seats over the years, sources said in the report.
Offering a seat to political newcomer Deviya Rane was also a calculated move, the report stated, as the BJP has fielded her from Poriem, the seat held by Deviya’s father-in-law, Congress’ Pratapsingh Rane. Six-time former CM Rane was the Congress’ first choice for the Poriem seat, but he dropped out on the second-to-last day of nomination filings.
“The BJP has never won Poriem, and had Pratapsingh Rane contested, it would have been difficult,” the report quoted a senior BJP leader as saying. Contesting against his daughter-in-law would have been equivalent to contesting against his son, which we knew he would never do, the source said.
With inputs from PTI
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