GOA, THE GRAND OPPOSITION ALLIANCE

The Congress, hoping for a resurgence in Goa before the 2027 assembly election, floats an anti-saffron front. But the ground is shaky even before local body polls

- Dhaval S. Kulkarni

IT'S GOA'S VERSION OF THE mahagathbandhan. Luckily, it's called GOA, or the 'Grand Opposition Alliance'. But the mother of all alliances, an idea floated by the Congress, has run into a familiar yet unexpected hurdle: defectors. The project, meant to sink the saffron armada in the assembly election due in 2027, is undergoing its pilot run in a smaller, but no less sterner, laboratory.

On November 29, the State Election Commission announced elections to the North and South Goa zilla panchayats (ZPs). A total of 868,000 people are eligible to vote. How many line up on December 20, and how many of them take a shine to this new alliance, will be clear on counting day: December 22.

A PILOT RUN

The polls are a litmus test for the Pramod Sawant government. If GOA holds its own, it's expected to continue on to its Phase 2 trials: the urban local body polls, due early next year. If it survives that, it will enter the finals a year later.

Assembly polls are due in January-February 2027, and the Congress is intent on bringing together the Goa Forward Party (GFP) and the Revolutionary Goans Party (RGP), a nativist outfit, under the GOA beach umbrella well in time. Both have an MLA each in the 40-member House. In the 2022 state polls, the Congress had shrunk to 11 seats; the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wrested 20.