At the onset of summer in 2027, five states are scheduled to go to the polls—Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur. The Congress and other Opposition parties are hopeful of mounting a strong challenge to the BJP in three of these five states, with Goa seen as a particularly difficult battleground. Punjab is an exception as it is ruled by the Aam Aadmi Party.
A senior Congress leader said, “Goa is still a bit too far for us, while all the others are within reach.” There are several reasons for the party’s pessimism about Goa: a weak organisational structure, persistent factionalism and opportunism among its leaders."
The party faced a deeper fracture within its ranks when Girish Chodankar, then an All India Congress Committee in-charge for Tamil Nadu, was transferred to his native state of Goa to head the state unit for the upcoming Assembly elections in 2027. His appointment replaced the existing state unit president, Amit Patkar, who had expected the elections to be contested under his leadership.
There are murmurs within the party that Patkar is now walking a separate line, which, if not contained by the party leadership soon, could further damage the party’s unity and cohesion.
Patkar headed the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee from 2023 to 2026—enough time to build a network of leaders who became dependent on his leadership. He has also cultivated a support base within the party that cannot be ignored. His supporters have struggled to come to terms with Chodankar’s return, particularly in light of his previous tenure and the Congress’s defeat in the 2022 elections.
However, several factors contributed to the Congress’s poor performance in 2022 and ultimately led to its defeat. Two parties tried to invest their full-fledged efforts in the state—the Aam Aadmi Party and the Trinamool Congress—which ate into the Congress’s secular support base, contributing to its defeat in the 40-member Assembly. The saffron camp won 20 seats and the Congress 11. Yet, many of the Congress legislators later left the party and joined the BJP.
“The Congress organisation has evolved a lot from the last time. They have become more opportunistic, and therefore there is difficulty for them to regain their footing and develop or re-establish a base that can help them challenge the BJP solidly,” a political commentator in Goa said.
For now, Chodankar versus Patkar is the immediate fault line within the organisation. But the deeper contest is also over who gains leverage so that they can control the Congress’s election machinery and candidate-selection process going into 2027.
