BJP leadership questioned over dismal showing in Goa polls

A less-than-stellar performance in the zilla panchayat polls on Friday sparked a fresh round of dissent within the BJP and the ruling coalition in Goa with a senior leader suggesting that the party may have fared better under the leadership of Manohar Parrikar, a former chief minister who is now the country's defence minister.

The BJP and its coalition partners narrowly scrapped through the South Goa ZP winning 13 out of the 25 seats, while in North Goa, considered bastion of the BJP, the ruling alliance could clock only 12 seats out of 25 and will require support of at least one independent candidates to rule the North Goa ZP.

The Congress as well as the Nationalist Congress Party had boycotted the poll, after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led coalition government decided to hold the poll on political party lines last month.

The BJP's lackluster performance in absence of credible Opposition parties, and despite aggressive campaigning by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, two BJP Lok Sabha MPs, cabinet ministers and MLAs, has forced senior leaders to suggest that something could be wrong at the helm.

Quoting an unattached Congress MLA Atanasio Monserrate, who earlier in the day said that the lackluster performance of the BJP was a result of the absence of Parrikar -- a former chief minister -- from active state politics, Francis D'Souza deputy chief minister and one of the most senior minority faces of the saffron party in Goa told IANS that the same could be a similar sentiment of "most of the BJP workers".

"He (Monserrate) said that 'Parrikar went to Delhi and something went wrong here. And for the next election if he does not come back, something will terribly go wrong here.' That could be a similar sentiment of most of the BJP workers...There could be a bit of merit in the argument," D'Souza said.

Before the poll, BJP leaders, both on record and off it, were convinced of sweeping victories in both Zilla Panchayats.

The deputy chief minister also said that the BJP would have to do a lot of soul searching because of the manner in which the ruling coalition performed even when there was no clear opposition in form of the Congress or the NCP.

"It is a very thoughtful issue. We have to examine what went wrong. What you call soul searching. Find out the reason why things have gone wrong," D'Souza said.

Chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar however defended his party's performance, but also added that some of the losses had also taught the party significant lessons.

"Our coalition has won in South Goa, while in North Goa we have a queue of independents waiting to support us...We may have lost in some places, but those losses are educative and will teach us how to put things right in the future," Parsekar said.

When asked to comment on D'Souza's remark on Parrikar's absence from state politics resulting in a relatively weak performance for the BJP and the ruling coalition, Parsekar said: "It is his opinion".