JOIN USCongress nominee Francisco Sardinha held on to the party’s stronghold seat of South Goa defeating Narendra Sawaikar of the Bharatiya Janata Party by 12,516 votes.
The United Goan Democratic Party (UGDP)’s Mathany Saldanha, running third in the race, picked up a meagre 16,717 votes. Battling the sabotage tactics of its own ministers, the Congress had to contend with a heavily reduced margin. Sardinha had won this seat in the 2007 by-election with a margin of 40,902 votes.
Luck favoured BJP’s Sripad Naik too who took the North Goa seat for a third time, defeating Jitendra Deshprabhu of the NCP by 6535 votes.
The Bharatiya Janata Party had won this seat by a margin of over 56,000 votes in 2004, which shows how close the Nationalist Congress Party came to causing an upset here.
Perhaps due to the absence of the Congress symbol UPA lost this seat.