‘Uzzo’ still burns: RG opens ZP account with two seats

Panaji: The hyper-local Revolutionary Goans (RG) made a strong debut in the zilla panchayat (ZP) elections, winning two seats on Monday. The party, which surprised many by winning the St Andre assembly seat in 2022, showed that its success was not a flash in the pan.

RG breached the Congress bastion of St Cruz and followed it up with a convincing win in St Lawrence, both falling within St Andre MLA Viresh Borkar’s assembly segment.RG candidate Esperenca Braganca won the Santa Cruz seat, defeating incumbent Congress candidate Shiney Oliveira. Oliveira alleged that BJP supporters were asked to back RG during the campaign to prevent her victory. Braganca secured 4,533 votes of the 12,286 polled, a 37% vote share.

RG president Manoj Parab said, “Our victory is a tight slap on Amit Patkar’s face because of whom the alliance failed.”The defeat also brought embarrassment to Congress-turned-BJP MLA Rudolfo Fernandes, making him the only MLA to lose after switching parties.“We have made history by winning in Santa Cruz, When the grand opposition alliance was being discussed, we were told that this is the Congress’ bastion and we cannot topple it,” said Borkar.

“The reason for the alliance breaking was Santa Cruz.”RG showed a strong hold over the seat, which overlaps with the St Andre constituency through the village panchayats of Batim, Curca-Bambolim and Siridao-Paliem. The party won Santa Cruz with a narrow margin of 779 votes, a result that could have swung in BJP’s favour due to the split among Congress, AAP and RG.In St Lawrence, RG candidate Trupti Bakal registered a decisive victory, polling 5,870 votes. Congress finished third with 1,486 votes. Besides BJP, RG is the only party with grassroots presence. By contesting independently, the party appears to be testing the waters ahead of the 2027 assembly elections. RGP also performed well in Shiroda, retaining its 2022 support base while in Siolim it finished a close second.

“We claimed Siolim and if you see, we came second. We claimed certain seats because we worked on the ground and went door to door,” said Parab.