Having failed its litmus test, the Bengal's ruling party is back to square one, trying to draw up a fresh strategy ahead of the polls in Meghalaya and Tripura.
Two days after quitting the Congress, former Goa chief minister Luizinho Faleiro joined the Trinamool Congress on Wednesday.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Goa looks all set to score a hattrick in the coastal state with the support of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, as vote counting trends of the February 14 elections indicated the BJP missing the majority mark by a whisker.
They said this was preliminary voter turnout and the final figure may cross 80 per cent as electoral fate of 301 candidates were locked in EVMs which will be opened on March 10 for counting.
The BJP, which rules the Centre, is in power in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and is all set to get Madhya Pradesh back and snatch Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress after today's vote count.
Chief Minister Pratapsinh Rane's son, Vishwajit, who won as an independent candidate, has already announced that he would support the Congress, taking the tally upto 20, just one short of the majority.
The West Bengal chief minister is in Goa and expected to interact with party workers and the fishermen community.
The Congress, which is not very keen on having an alliance with the TMC, called it 'an untrustworthy ally', which is trying to grow at its expense.
Rebel Shiv Sena MLAs led by senior leader Eknath Shinde, who are currently camping in Goa, will hold a meeting on Thursday to decide the way forward as they are likely to support the Bharatiya Janata Party to form the next government in Maharashtra following the resignation of Uddhav Thackeray as the chief minister.
The BJP is certain that the TMC will divide the Opposition votes, leaving it free to cruise through the polls.
'BJP central observers have come to Goa and are scheming to merge smaller parties within their party to run the government.'
"The Congress party complains a bit too much. It accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of 'stealing' the mandate in Goa. It unsuccessfully petitioned before the Supreme Court. It attempted to raise issues in the Lok Sabha," he said in a Facebook post.
The MGP, which had won three seats in the 2017 polls, is currently left with only one MLA after two of its legislators joined the ruling BJP.
Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has recently written to all opposition parties including the Congress, calling on everyone to come together and put up a united fight against saffron forces.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his cabinet colleagues Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, chief ministers of Nationalist Democratic Alliance-ruled states and prominent personalities from industry and Bollywood on Thursday attended the grand swearing-in of Devendra Fadnavis as Maharashtra Chief Minister in Mumbai.
The Goa bench of the Bombay high court on Thursday upheld the Goa assembly speaker's order dismissing two petitions seeking the disqualification of 12 MLAs who left their respective parties and joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019.
Desai's comments came amidst speculation doing the rounds in the political circles that Sawant will again be the chief minister of Goa.
Campaigning came to an end on Saturday for the single-day election in Uttarakhand and Goa, two states known for political volatility where the Bharatiya Janata Party is attempting to retain power, and for the second phase of assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh on February 14.
The AAP suffered a humiliating defeat in Haryana with most of its candidates set to lose their security deposit.
It was crucial for the BJP to bag the two seats as it does not enjoy a majority on its own in the 40-member assembly.
Deviya Rane said it is historic that no legislator (in Goa) has won consecutively so many times from the same seat.
He also said that although India got independence much before Goa became free, people of the country could not enjoy at that time as they felt uneasy thinking that one part was the country was still under foreign rule.
If pandemic (mis)management threatened to dominate Goa's electoral discourse, the BJP is up against a deeper structural issue in its organisation, created by the fact that a majority of the legislature party and the ministerial council is made up of Congress defectors, disparagingly referred to by the Opposition as "imports". Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
A Portuguese era law, which transfers the property ownership rights of a man to his wife after his death, has been cited in defence by the owners of a restaurant in Assagao village in North Goa, which the Congress claimed was linked to Union minister Smriti Irani's daughter.
Social activist Aires Rodrigues during a hearing before Goa excise commissioner on Monday produced a lease agreement signed between the owners of a controversial restaurant in North Goa and a company allegedly linked to Union minister Smriti Irani's family.
This is a complete betrayal of the mandate of the people of the Sagardighi Assembly constituency, Ramesh said on Twitter.
The BJP has nominated sitting MLA Dayanand Sopte from Mandrem assembly segment, which Parsekar had represented between 2002 and 2017.
Sawant took the oath in Konkani language.
There have been speculations since some time about a rift between the TMC and Prashant Kishor's I-PAC.
The Congress legislators, led by Leader of Opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar, demanded that the governor should summon one-day session of the assembly for a floor test.
Debutant legislator Rekha Gupta was sworn in as Delhi chief minister along with six ministers on Thursday in a grand show of strength full of colour and spectacle to mark the Bharatiya Janata Party's return to power in the city after more than 26 years.
With the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party and the Trinamool Congress in the poll arena, the election is expected to be a multi-cornered one this time.
BJP leader and caretaker chief minister Pramod Sawant is the clear favourite for the post of the CM but faces some opposition.
The Delhi high court has said that Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera, Netta D'Souza along with others conspired to 'launch a tirade of false scathing and belligerent personal attacks' on Bharatiya Janata Party leader Smriti Irani and her daughter, who are neither owners of the restaurant in Goa nor have they ever applied for the licence for food and beverages at the eatery, as alleged.
Parrikar returned to Goa as the chief minister for the fourth time, though he could not complete full terms in his earlier stints.
Unfazed by the controversy over his comments on the gangrape of two Delhi-based women in Goa, Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar on Saturday maintained it was a "small incident" and that it occurs where tourism flourishes.
"Special circumstances" exist in Punjab, Wasnik said and added that in view of these, the AAP and the Congress have decided to fight the Lok Sabha polls separately in the state.
'The politics of Goa is moving around a sole entity, which is land.'
Her move comes after doctors advised her to get away from the heavy pollution in the national capital in view of her chronic chest infection, party insiders said.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi had on Tuesday asked its state unit chiefs in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab and Manipur to put in their papers after the party's drubbing in the recently held Assembly polls in these states.
