the goan I network
MAPUSA
There was never a dull moment when counting for Mapusa bypoll was taken up early on Thursday morning, as the two rival candidates of the principal national parties and their supporters were kept on edge at least in the first three rounds.
Fortunes fluctuated between BJP’s Joshua D’Souza and Sudhir Kandolkar of the Congress from the first round itself.
Contrary to perception, Congress’ Kandolkar, took a head start by leading with a slender margin of 59 votes at the end of the first round of counting.
In the second round, Joshua cancelled his rival’s lead and moved ahead by a wafer thin margin of 28 votes.
However, Kandolkar bounced back in the third round leading by a margin of 157 votes. From the fourth round onwards, however, there was no looking back for Joshua who gradually increased his lead and at the end of the final round, polled a total of 11,167 votes including postal ballots and won by a margin of 1,151 votes.
Kandolkar came a close second polling a total of 10,016 votes which also included the postal ballots.
“It was an intense counting session. I don’t think Congress has ever had this kind of impact before,” remarked Joshua after coming out of the counting hall.
BJP achieved 49.12 voting percentage while Congress got 44.06% of the total votes.
The remaining five candidates failed to make much of an impact in the election.
Independent candidate, Ashish Shirodkar came a poor third with just 504 votes followed by GSM’s Nandan Sawant who polled 279 votes.
AAP’s Shekar Naik polled a total of just 243 votes. Incidentally, in the 2017 polls AAP’s Shraddha Khalap had polled little above 2000 votes.
Sanjay Barde of NCP polled 200 votes while Independent candidate, Sudesh Hasotikar polled a paltry 42 votes.
