Cortalim MLA Alina Saldanha very unlikely to get BJP ticket for polls 2022

PANAJI: Reliable sources from the BJP senior leadership in Goa suggest that Cortalim MLA Alina Saldana is very unlikely to get the ticket for the Goa State Assembly polls to be held in February 2022. While no BJP leader was ready to make any official comment on this matter, the hints being dropped by the leadership suggest a new BJP face in Cortalim for polls 2022.

We tried to contact Alina Saldanha for her feedback, but she was unavailable for comment. We will update this story, if Saldanha responds to us.

While the reasons are many, the main reason being the BJP leadership does not want to take any changes and wants to win all the seats from the Mormugao taluka as it did in 2017. Saldanha is being perceived as a weak candidate this time and the BJP leadership could be looking to replace her with a younger, more active candidate.

Another reason could be Saldanha’s opposition to various mega projects in the State, including the South Western Railway double-tracking and coal transportation projects, that had rattled the BJP leadership, which privately asked her to lie low and only concentrate on her constituency.

In August this year Dabolim MLA Mauvin Godinho, a senior member of Chief Minister Pramod’s Sawant’s cabinet, had voiced his disappointment and claimed that Saldanha had done no work in the Cortalim constituency and the projects she inaugurated were the ones he had started when he represented the constituency. Godinho had represented Cortalim for four terms earlier.