Atanasio ‘Babush’ Monserrate lost the Assembly elections from Panaji once, won it twice. Gambling on the calculation that his CCP voter base would see him through, he took on the BJP solo in 2017 and lost. He was an unattached MLA at the time. Back in the contest on a Congress ticket in 2019, he won the seat with a convincing majority, only to deceive the party a month later to unflinchingly defect to the BJP.
His second win in 2022, this time as a BJP nominee, had Manohar Parrikar’s son Utpal Parrikar snapping at his heels. Monserrate made it through with a narrow margin of over 700 votes, and cursed the RSS/BJP workers for betraying him.
Utpal Parrikar would have probably won Panaji had the BJP fielded him instead. The capital had been Manohar Parrikar’s political base for 25 years. But fixated on its long-term goal to wipe out the Congress in Goa with imports and defections, the saffron party chose to sideline him.
Monserrate’s recent CCP win is not a trailer to 2027 Assembly elections as Chief Minister Pramod Sawant would have us believe. Nor is it a trailer to Panaji 2027.
Monserrate has had a hold over the CCP for over two decades. 2026 was the fifth time his panel has taken control of the city corporation. Unlike previous elections though, the rules of play for March 11 were skewed well in advance.
The BJP, which leaves nothing to chance when it comes to elections, brought in the City of Panaji Corporation (Amendment) Act 2024. The Bill, pushed through in 2025, passed on the job of delimitation of wards to the director of municipal administration rather than the State Election Commission, giving those in power a freehand to reshape the boundaries of wards to their advantage.
The Aam Aadmi Party, which had three candidates in mind for the CCP polls, withdrew two when they found their supporters had been tossed around like a salad, with families split up into different wards.
Surendra Furtado (Congress), who had won nine successive contests, found himself without a ward to contest from. A previously held Congress ward had now been reserved for women. The redrawn delimitation was notified just a month ahead of polling day, leaving the Utpal Parrikar panel—a motley grouping of anti-Monserrate players—in complete disarray.
“Delimitation has become a tool for the government to manipulate wards based on voting patterns for municipality, panchayat and zilla panchayat elections,” journalist Kishore Naik says, concerned that even the media hasn’t taken this seriously enough.
Utpal Parrikar wasn’t wrong in a sense when he said after the trouncing, that the reshaped wards and reservation changes had put his panel at a disadvantage. His candidates—many of them new faces—had only a fortnight to campaign and connect with voters.
Disconnected from the ground realities and lacking in political acumen to take on a seasoned player like Monserrate, Utpal Parrikar proved more of a setback than a catalyst for the Ami Panjekar panel—a few Congress faces, one AAP and the rest BJP dissidents.
Leading up to the election, social media pundits campaigned rather naively for Panjekars “who want casinos out of the Mandovi”, to go out and vote. But elections in Panaji ever since Monserrate and the heavy demographic changes, are not so simple.
“Where are the original people from Panaji left in the city?” Furtado asks. Hundreds of young Panaji residents have migrated to the UK leaving behind only ageing parents. Government employees from far-flung villages in Goa who stayed on post-retirement to live in the city, are now voters here.
How many of the people who have moved from unlivable cities to Taleigao and Caranzalem would give a fig about whether the casinos stay, leave or sink? Or whether the Mermaid garden is replaced by a parking lot or a plastic fish (like the one in Miramar)? New settlers rarely have an emotional connect to a city that was never theirs to begin with, and a culture that is alien. Some may even derive a sense of pride to be living in India’s casino capital, the Las Vegas of South Asia. Those gaudy boats are something to show off to visiting relatives.
Monserrate has been in politics for 25 years. He knows every twist and turn of how to play the electoral game, whether it involves deceiving political parties (as he did the UGDP and the Congress), or connecting with his captive base through favours. His voter connect is nothing if not transactional.
After the CCP fiasco, there has been some debate on the need for ‘voter connect’ if the Opposition means to take the BJP down in Goa. But what really is voter connect? A war chest of funds? To pay fees; buy textbooks; sponsor wedding receptions; donate to an educational/religious institute; dole out government jobs?
Manohar Parrikar perhaps realised early on the futility of matching this one-on-one voter connect in Panaji which is why it was rumoured he had a backhand understanding with Monserrate for the transfer of his CCP vote during an Assembly election.
If there’s one certainty to emerge from the Panaji civic body polls it is this: Congress and Utpal Parrikar should never attempt a tie-up again. The enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend logic didn’t work and never would given their disparate ideologies.
With Rohit Monserrate now quietly settled in as the mayor of Panaji for yet another term—a short one this time, political pundits can take a well deserved break till the 2027 Assembly elections, when yet another Monserrate steps into the fray for probably a long-haul of their family raj in Tiswadi.
(Devika Sequeira is a senior
journalist based in Goa.)
