PORTUGUESE PASSPORT EFFECT ON GOA POLLS Stephen Dias, Dona Paula 9422443110 15th July 2022
The Portuguese government in their abundant largesse has to be praised for having kept a window of opportunity, so that sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of those whose birth were registered in Goa on or before 19th December, 1961 could acquire Portuguese nationality and thus find lucrative employment in especially the United Kingdom as well as to a certain extent, in France. Several tens of thousands of Goan youth are now employed in Europe and they mostly hail from South Goa as well as places such as Siridao, Agasaim, Santa Cruz and Merces in particular. However, alas, since these Portuguese passport holders relinquished the right to vote in Goa on surrendering their Indian passports, by a conservative estimate, in the past 15-20 years about 4-5 lakh names have been deleted from the electoral rolls in Goa with the result that a sizeable percentage of the Goan electorate has shrunk. Make no mistake about it, these 4-5 lakh voters were mostly supporters of the Congress in Goa and so the support base of the Congress has reduced considerably thus resulting in the defeat of the Congress even though Congress till the 2017 Assembly polls managed to garner 17 MLAs. It is very difficult to apportion responsibility and blame for this turn of events because the youth who chose to migrate to Europe in particular were not able to find gainful employment in Goa and thus were left with no other choice then to acquire Portuguese nationality and thus earn their livelihoods in foreign shores. End