Pawar makes party-building a pre-condition for North seat
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 27 May 2013 10:18 IST
Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar has indicated to its party cadres in Goa not to take North Goa seat for Lok Sabha for granted.
During his personal visit to Goa, he met the NCP state executive members and told them to concentrate on both North and South Goa.
In Lok Sabha election, the NCP always gets the North Goa seat as a part of the Congress-NCP coalition.
“I will get the North seat for the NCP but then you need to strengthen the party in the whole state, from the booth committee level”, Pawar told the local leaders.
Local NCP chief spokesperson Trajano D’Mello also confirmed that Pawar has directed all its members to gear up to build the organization statewide.
According to a senior NCP member, Pawar had also made it clear at the national convention held in Baroda on 10 October last year that the party would not import any candidate from outside.
Having no fit candidate, the NCP had imported Jitendra Deshprabhu from the Congress to contest North Goa seat in the last Lok Sabha poll.
In order to avoid such an embarrassing situation, the local aspirants have been concentrating only on North Goa as fresh parliamentary elections are scheduled next year.
Pawar has told the local leaders that he would manage to get the Goa seat for NCP but has urged to increase party’s bargaining power by strengthening the cadre base from village to state level.
Goa seat becomes crucial for the NCP as it needs to show its voter strength at least in some states to maintain its status as a national party.
While the NCP is strong only in Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat are next in a line in terms of voter strength while it also has a presence in Kerala, UP and few north-eastern states.
NCP is very weak in Goa. It could not manage to get even one MLA elected to the Goa Legislative Assembly.
The party has nothing different from the Congress - except it's prefix 'Nationalist'.
This party was formed on the issue of 'foreign origin' of Sonia but they are sharing power with Congress led by Sonia.
Unless some disgruntled Congress leaders join NCP, it has no chance to get any MLA elected to the Assembly.
Congress will give North Goa Parliamentary seat to NCP because they know, it is difficult to defeat Shripad Naik of BJP.