Voters angry at those who force bypolls: Parsekar

After boycotting the election campaign of BJP's Mandrem candidate Dayanand Sopte, former Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Laxmikant Parsekar on Tuesday said there would be a backlash against "those candidates who force bypolls" on people.

Parsekar, a former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Mandrem, also told reporters that vis-a-vis the Lok Sabha polls, there was a general mood among the people to vote Prime Minister Narendra Modi back in power.

"By-elections are forced on people and they do not like it. The common man is angry and is likely to express this anger by voting against the candidate who has forced the bypoll.

"But overall, there is an impression for the Lok Sabha polls that people want Narendra Modi back," Parsekar told reporters after casting his ballot in Mandrem.

The bypoll were necessitated after Sopte, who was elected on a Congress ticket in 2017, quit the party in 2018 and joined the BJP.

In the 2017 polls, Sopte had defeated Parsekar and the latter became the state's first sitting Chief Minister to lose an Assembly poll.

Parsekar was on the verge of contesting as an Independent candidate after the BJP announced that Sopte would be contesting the bypoll from the Mandrem seat in North Goa, which has been represented by Parsekar since 2002.

He later watered down his position but refused to campaign for Sopte in the run-up to the Mandrem bypoll.

--IANS

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