PANAJI: The Bharatiya Janata Party will stress on its developmental achievements as well as populist schemes instead of carrying out negative propaganda of the rival parties during its election campaign for the forthcoming state assembly election, as also field more Catholic candidates as compared to the previous state assembly polls.
As per the indication, the BJP, this time could have around 25 per cent of its candidates from the Catholic community, thus stepping into the domain of its main rival party – Congress.
Coming out with this information, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar Saturday evening said that the national executive meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which concluded in New Delhi on Saturday, decided to stress on the work of the governments in the states, which are facing the assembly elections.
“The central government wants to dedicate the birth centenary year of BJP’s ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay to the upliftment of poor and Goa government already has two schemes named after him,” he added, stating that the meeting further discussed the strategies for bringing back the BJP governments to power in states, which already had them, and establishing the BJP governments in those states, which had governments of other political parties.
Speaking from the national capital, the Chief Minister said that the BJP had fielded six Catholic candidates during the 2012 assembly polls, all of whom were elected by the people, and now number of such candidates could cross eight. “During the previous assembly polls, the BJP had contested in 27 constituencies, while today it is set to contest in additional 10 constituencies,” he observed, stating that as a result there would naturally be proportional increase in the number of Catholic candidates.
The BJP, during the 2012 state assembly polls had fielded candidates namely Francis D’Souza, Michael Lobo, Glenn Ticlo, Matanhy Saldanha/ Alina Saldanha, Carlos Almeida and Nilesh Cabral.
Parsekar noted that all these six Catholic sitting MLAs of BJP have been shortlisted for contesting at the forthcoming state assembly election, and there are more additions of Catholic candidates to this list such as Mauvin Godinho for Dabolim and Arthur D’Silva for Curtorim. “The BJP can field more Catholic candidates,” he noted.
Even if the BJP, slated to contest in 37 electoral constituencies, fields nine Catholic candidates then around 25 per cent of its candidates would be from the Catholic community. And that would be a major step for the party, which started its journey in Goan politics with all Hindu candidates.