NT Reporter Mapusa
The BJP won both Penha de Franca and Socorro zilla panchayat constituencies under the Porvorim assembly segment with comfortable margins.
Sandeep Salgaonkar won from Penha de Franca, while Amit Asnodkar secured victory in Socorro, polling winning margins of 4,739 votes and 5,687 votes respectively.
Salgaonkar, a former sarpanch of Salvador do Mundo, was nominated by Porvorim MLA and Tourism Minister Rohan Khaunte.
Asnodkar, the son of former Socorro sarpanch Devidas Asnodkar, was also picked by Khaunte and supported by Saligao MLA Kedar Naik and Calangute MLA Michael Lobo.
The Socorro ZP constituency comprises Socorro, which falls in the Porvorim Assembly constituency, Guirim and Saligao in the Saligao Assembly constituency, and Parra in the Calangute Assembly constituency.
In Penha de Franca, Salgaonkar defeated Congress candidate Eldric D’Souza, who polled 2,772 votes, while RGP candidate Rohan Dhavade secured 547 votes. In Socorro, BJP’s nearest rival was Congress candidate Gorakhnath Mandrekar, who received 3,508 votes. Tiotino Lobo of RGP polled 1,605 votes, while Independent candidate and former zilla panchayat member Kartik Kudnekar secured 1,014 votes.
Thanking voters for their strong support, Khaunte said the victory belonged to the people who chose development. He said leaders supporting the Congress candidate had indulged in negative and low-level propaganda against BJP and himself, but voters showed them their place.
He said Congress
had suffered a complete defeat across Goa in the ZP elections.
Khaunte said voters had accepted the mantra of “Viksit Bharat” and “Swayampurna Goa” and once again expressed trust in the performance of the double-engine government.
The Porvorim MLA said Asnodkar secured nearly 60 per cent of the votes, while Salgaonkar polled around 67 per cent.
This was the first ZP election after Khaunte joined BJP just before the 2022 assembly elections.
In the last ZP elections held in 2020, Khaunte, then an Independent MLA, had lost the Socorro seat. This time, he campaigned extensively in both constituencies. The three-time MLA had won the last assembly elections by a margin of over 7,950 votes.
