Candidates for the North and South Goa LS seats are announced by Congress

Former Union minister Ramakant Khalap and Viriato Fernandes were named by the Congress on Saturday as its candidates for the Lok Sabha seats in North and South Goa.

The statement put an end to the INDIA bloc’s protracted search for its candidates in Goa and was announced by K C Venugopal, general secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC).

The coalition of over two dozen opposition parties has decided to field Congress candidates in the coastal state’s two Lok Sabha seats.

From 1996 to 1998, Khalap (76) represented North Goa as an MP for the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP).

In the administration of the late prime leader Rajiv Gandhi, he served as the Union minister of state for law.

Later on, he joined Congress and abandoned the MGP.

Khalap proposed modifications to the Indian Code of Criminal Procedures and Indian Code of Civil Procedures while serving as the country’s law minister. He also worked toward the establishment of the Arbitration Act of India.

In Parliament, he also proposed the Women’s Reservation Bill.

Fernandes is a former Indian Navy officer running for South Goa position in the Congress.

According to his X handle biography, he is a double MBA graduate, a mechanical engineer with a focus on aeronautics engineering, a former Indian Navy officer, and a veteran of the Kargil War.

Fernandes had an unsuccessful campaign from the Dabolim seat in the 2022 Goa legislative assembly elections.

Goa’s Lok Sabha elections are scheduled on May 7 in a single phase, with vote counting taking place on June 4.

Candidates for the seats in North Goa (Shripad Naik) and South Goa (Pallavi Dempo) have already been declared by the governing BJP.

While South Goa, which has a substantial Christian population, has mostly stayed with the Congress, it has also been won by the BJP and regional parties on a few occasions. The North Goa seat has been a stronghold of the governing BJP since 1999.