Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP's) Goa chief ministerial candidate Amit Palekar on Thursday, 10 March, lost from North Goa's Santa Cruz Assembly constituency.
The Congress candidate Rodolfo Louis Fernandes won the seat with 8,841 votes, while his closest rival, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Antonio Fernandes, won 6,377 votes. Palekar came third with 4,098 votes.
This was Palekar's first election on an AAP ticket after joining the party in October 2021.
Meanwhile, the AAP has managed to secure two out of the 40 seats in the contest that was largely considered to be between the BJP and the Congress.
The BJP has won 20 seats so far, while the Congress has won 10.
Formerly a lawyer, Palekar was in the news in 2021 for providing patients oxygen cylinders when there was a massive oxygen shortage during the second wave of COVID-19.
He had also donned an activist's hat when he went on a hunger strike to protest against unlawful construction at the Old Goa heritage complex in November last year.
One of the primary reasons he was picked by AAP to lead the party's campaign in the state was because he belongs to Goa's largest caste group – the Bhandari community.
In 2017, AAP had failed to win any seat in the Assembly elections.
While Congress was the single largest party in 2017 with 17 seats, the BJP had won 13 seats and formed the government by allying with the Goa Forward Party and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party.
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