Panaji: With the death of Taleigao MLA Jennifer Monserrate on Sunday, residents of the two constituencies, Ponda and Taleigao, have to wait seven more months to elect their representatives.Jennifer’s death reduced the strength of the 40-member Goa Legislative Assembly to 38, while BJP strength reduced to 26 MLAs. However, there is no threat to govt as BJP has numbers way beyond the majority mark. Two MGP MLAs and three independent MLAs also support BJP.In the Goa legislative assembly, opposition has only seven MLAs.Jennifer is the second BJP MLA to die during this term, the other being former former agriculture minister Ravi Naik in Oct last year. Considering the high court order, both seats are likely to remain unrepresented till the general election, scheduled to be held in Feb 2027.Naik, a two-time former chief minister, died at 79. Naik suffered a heart attack at home, and was shifted to a private hospital in Ponda, where he breathed his last.Naik was CM in 1991 and and held the post for around 28 months, followed by a six-day stint in 1994.In April, the Bombay high court stopped the Election Commission (EC) of India from proceeding with the Ponda bypoll, the first time in Goan political history that an assembly election was cancelled on the orders of a court.The high court held that the EC’s March 16 notification declaring the Ponda bypoll was “arbitrary” as it contravened proviso 151A(a) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which exempts the EC from holding elections if the remainder of the term of a legislator in relation to the vacancy was less than a year.Two voters from Ponda constituency—social worker Pritam Harmalkar, 49, and advocate Ankita Kamat, 32—approached the high court challenging the holding of the election on the grounds that the newly-elected MLA would not be able to complete a mandatory minimum tenure of one year according to the RPA.The petitioners told the HC that the incoming member would hardly get a term of 10 months as the term of the assembly expires on March 14, 2027, and hence the election is contrary to provisions of the RPA.
