Goa elections 2022: In absence of any foothold, TMC's efforts to enthuse voters seem to have fallen flat

Despite the high-pitched campaign that Mamata Banerjee’s TMC launched in Goa, where it is fighting all the 40 assembly seats for the February 14 polls, much of its efforts have been a non-starter with the West Bengal party unable to enthuse voters.

The TMC made its presence felt in the coastal state in September when local political leaders were personally approached by Prashant Kishore of I-PAC, which is the official campaign manager of the party running the ‘Project Goa’ show. Former chief minister Luizinho Faleiro, former deputy chief ministers Sudin Dhavlikar and Vijai Sardessai all have over time confirmed that it was Kishore who had established contact.

While Faleiro, then with the Congress and an MLA from Navelim became the first political leader from the state to embrace the TMC, and was rewarded with a Rajya Sabha nomination, Dhavalikar’s MGP forged an alliance with it. Sardessai however rejected an offer to merge his Goa Forward Party with the TMC to become the party’s face in Goa. His party has allied with the Congress.

The TMC campaign has been high-pitched right from the word go. Besides Mamata Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek, TMC MPs Mahua Moitra, as party in-charge for Goa, a host of party leaders have been despatched to Goa for varied durations of time and on multiple occasions. Tennis star Leander Paes, whose father traces his origins to Goa and was brought into the picture by the TMC is no longer to be seen at its press conferences. However, besides Mamata Banerjee there is no local face seen. The Goa TMC president Kiran Kandolkar, is only seen at press conferences with Moitra.

Besides AAP, it is only the Trinamool Congress which had taken over the state with its advertising blitzkrieg targeting outdoor hoardings, newspaper advertisements, social media outreach and bombarding people with pre-recorded phone calls etc. The entire ground campaign is organised by a team of the I-PAC with some 2,500 volunteers handling social media messaging. There is practically no stone left untouched by the TMC, yet, political analysts suggest that it has not been able to capture the imagination of the Goan voter.

“Where is the base at the grassroots,” asks political commentator and academician Dr Manoj Kamat raising an important point. The TMC in Goa, he points out, does not have any block level committees. “Even the state executive committee was formed after the election dates were announced and when they had started deciding on candidates and distributing tickets. Thus, the TMC’s seriousness was never to be seen by the voter,” he explains.

Dr Kamat says that people have come to believe parties like TMC are in Goa to split votes. “So even if they don’t mean it, their actions prove it. People have realised that the TMC’s actions are at the cost of the Congress, which may end up benefiting the BJP. Hence the questioning of TMC’s actions. People realise that it is too late to talk about alliances,” he says.

Also, since the TMC entered Goan political arena it has not seen a single BJP leader join it. “They have come here with the idea of defeating the BJP, but have only inducted Congressmen. And then fifty per cent of those who joined them in the first lot have already resigned,” Dr Kamat points out. Former MLA Lavoo Mamledar and former Goa Congress general secretary Yatish Naik are among the founding members of the Trinamool in Goa to have quit the party within days. Former Congress MLA Alexio Reginald Lourenco, who was the declared Congress candidate from Curtorim, joined the TMC but later parted ways.

Lourenco, who did not spell out why he quit the TMC days after joining it later told journalists that there was a backlash among voters to his joining the party. “I ended up hurting a lot of people. I hurt my constituents, my friends, my close friends. I had taken the decision to quit the Congress without even having a word with my constituents. My own friends started despising me,” Reginaldo, who tried to make a re-entry into the Congress but was denied the chance, reveals. He has now filed his nominations as an independent candidate.

The announcement of a few welfare schemes that the party has spoken of introducing in Goa, if voted to power, is being seen as a data gathering exercise in the absence of any foothold in the state. The Congress and its alliance partner the Goa Forward Party have jointly submitted a complaint to the Chief Election Commission in New Delhi against the TMC and IPAC for this act of gathering personal information of the voters.

Political observer Advocate Cleofato Almeida Coutinho said that the people of Goa are also questioning the TMC for taking barbs on the Congress while claiming it had put up a ‘firm offer’ for an alliance in the state. While the TMCs Pawan Verma claimed to have made the offer, Congress’ P Chidambaram, dismissed it as a suggestion which he had forwarded to his party’s leadership. “This idea of a ‘firm offer’ from the TMC is being questioned by the people, because which party would poach leaders from the Congress, make barbs against it, firm up Congress rejects as candidates and then some expect seat sharing,” Coutinho asks.

And if complaints from its political opponents were not enough TMC’s Benaulim candidate and former Goa chief minister Churchill Alemao has questioned I-PAC’s role in the state elections. In an interview to a national television channel, Alemao said he does not know what the I-PAC volunteers were doing for his constituency besides conducting surveys. Alemao has also made his displeasure known over selection of candidates and TMC’s stance on various issues like the fishing industry.