Goa Congress chief Girish Chodankar steps down following party’s poor show in Assembly election  

@the_news_21

Mumbai: Following the Congress’ crushing defeat in the recently concluded Goa Assembly election, Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Girish Chodankar resigned from his party post while accepting “full responsibility” for his party’s disappointing performance. 

All-India Congress Committee (AICC) Goa in-charge, Dinesh Gundu Rao confirmed receipt of Chodankar’s resignation. Party sources said Chodankar’s resignation was likely to be accepted by the high command. 

The names of Aleixo Sequeira and Sankalp Amonkar, newly-elected MLAs of Nuvem and Mormugao constituencies, are doing the rounds as frontrunners for the post of GPCC chief. Former Goa chief minister Digambar Kamat, who won his seventh term from Margao by a massive margin of more than 8,000 votes, is also touted as a possible candidate for the new GPCC chief.     

Speaking to newspersons soon after the election results were announced, Chodankar remarked “I take full responsibility for the results.” He went to the extent of stating that the party high command could remove him from the post of Goa Congress chief. 

This is not the first time that Chodankar has resigned. He had resigned after the Congress’ unsatisfactory performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in which he himself was defeated by BJP’s Shripad Naik in the North Goa Lok Sabha constituency, and again in December 2020 after his party’s dismal performance in the local body polls. 

A number of leaders within the Goa Congress had long been unhappy over Chodankar’s leadership even before the Assembly polls with MP Fransisco Sardinha and ex-Congress MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco demanding Chodankar be removed as GPCC chief. 

Speculation was rife in August 2021 that the Congress high command would replace him ahead of the crucial 2022 Assembly election. However, Chodankar was retained while Sequeira had been appointed as party working president in a bid to mollify the disgruntled factions within the party. 

The BJP secured a decisive mandate of 20 seats out of the 40 Assembly seats. The Congress, its main challenger in this election, could manage just 11 of the 37 seats it had contested. Its ally, the Vijai Sardesai-led Goa Forward Party (GFP) won just one of the three seats it contested, with Sardesai being the sole GFP MLA elected from Fatorda seat. 

The party’s below par performance under Chodankar’s leadership was all the more striking as prior to the polls, the defection-scarred Congress had made an effort to clean up its house by taking a hard-line on defectors and awarding tickets to fresh faces. 

It had even made its candidates swear anti-defection oaths in places of worship, and pledge the same on legal affidavits while herding them in a plush resort just ahead of the counting on March 10.  

In 2017, the Congress had emerged as the single-largest party, winning 17 seats but failed to seize the initiative to form a government. This time, it failed to capitalize on the alleged ‘anti-incumbency’ besetting the ruling BJP which was seeking to form a government for the third consecutive term.   

Badly affected by the split in anti-BJP votes, the Congress also suffered from the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Trinamool Congress (TMC) and especially the Revolutionary Goans Party (RGP), which led to Congress vote share come down to 23.46% from its 2017 vote share of 28.5%.   

Despite its overall disappointing performance, Congress candidates offered credible opposition in some segments – with the party’s Sanquelim candidate Dharmesh Saglani giving a tough fight to Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant (who won by slender margin of 666 votes) and Congress candidates Digambar Kamat and Altone D’ Costa defeating both BJP Deputy Chief Ministers Manohar Azgaonkar and Chandrakant Kavlekar from Margao and Quepem constituencies respectively.