Interference of religious leaders cost us in South Goa: State BJP chief

The Congress and the BJP Tuesday retained their respective strongholds of South Goa and North Goa Lok Sabha constituencies.

In South Goa, Congress’s Captain Viriato Fernandes got 2,17,836 votes while BJP’s Pallavi Dempo received 2,04,301 — a margin of 13,535 votes.

In the run-up to the elections, Fernandes, a Kargil War veteran, had stirred controversy after allegedly claiming that the Constitution was “forced” on Goans. Referring to his remarks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had slammed the Congress for “insulting the Constitution” and termed it a “calculated move to break the nation”.

On Tuesday, Fernandes said: “The people of Goa have voted against unemployment, religious discrimination and abuse of power by the ruling party. I thank the people who have voted for me and the alliance partners for ensuring my victory. In the Assembly segment where the Prime Minister held a rally, the Congress got a lead of 3,000 votes.” Fernandes was also backed by AAP and Goa Forward Party, which are part of the INDIA bloc.

Meanwhile, BJP’s Shripad Naik, the incumbent North Goa MP and outgoing Union Minister of State for Tourism, won the North Goa constituency for a record sixth time, defeating his “friend” and former Union Law Minister Ramakant Khalap of the Congress by a comfortable margin of over 1.16 lakh votes.

Despite concerns of anti-incumbency, Naik, who claimed in the run-up to the polls that this would be his last parliamentary election, received over 2.57 lakh votes against Khalap’s over 1.41 lakh votes. In the 1999 Lok Sabha polls, Naik had defeated Khalap by over 36,000 votes.

In 2019, Congress’s Francisco Sardinha had defeated BJP’s Narendra Sawaikar by 9,755 votes in South Goa. In North Goa, Naik had defeated Congress’s Girish