The Trinamul Congress on Friday declared its decision to take the Goa plunge ahead of next year’s Assembly elections.

The declaration on the front page of Trinamul’s Bengali daily Jago Bangla decisively ended speculation that had been rife since poll consultant Prashant Kishor and 200-odd members of his team had been seen testing the Goa waters.

Although Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee did mention Goa in passing in a couple of her speeches during the campaign for the Bhowanipore bypoll over the past few days, it wasn’t until the formal declaration in the mouthpiece that her party’s attempts for a westward expansion was established beyond doubt.

In the story laid out under the headline “Target sarkar toiri, Goay vote-juddhey Trinamul (The target is to form the state government, Trinamul in the electoral battle of Goa)”, the party said the groundwork had already begun.

“A team of Trinamul Congress MPs would visit Goa very soon. Before participating in the electoral battle in Goa, an I-Pac (Kishor’s team) group is already there and has begun work. Utmost preparations are underway,” read the piece.

The Assembly elections in Goa — with barely 11.5 lakh voters — are likely to take place in February next year when the BJP-led Pramod Sawant government would seek re-election in the 40-seat House.

The principal Opposition in Goa is the Congress.

In 2017, in a bitterly controversial power-grab, the BJP had formed the government in Goa, despite securing only 13 seats, compared to the Congress’s 17. The majority mark is 21.

“Why Goa? The party’s strategy and aim, for now, are the small states…. There is an intense anti-BJP current in Goa. In the past election, although the mandate was against the BJP, the people of the state think by retaining power through the purchase of (non-BJP) MLAs, the saffron army disregarded the verdict of the people,” read the Jago Bangla story, which asserted that the Congress couldn’t keep its flock in order nor could it expand there.

“Keeping the West Bengal example forward, the Trinamul Congress’s message in Goa is that the BJP can only be defeated by it, not the Congress,” read the Jago Bangla story.

“According to that math, the party’s reach is being put in place. Political steps will be taken on the basis of an understanding of the situation.

Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee will go to campaign for the election,” it added.

Since his appointment as the party’s national general-secretary on June 5, exactly a month after Mamata was sworn in as chief minister of Bengal for the third consecutive term, Abhishek has – in close coordination with Kishor – been busy exploring opportunities for expansion for Trinamul.

Abhishek has on more than one occasion made it clear in public that whichever state Trinamul goes to henceforth, it will do so with the intent to win, not just to start a state unit and get a handful of MLAs. Since then, the party has been seen taking some decisive steps towards becoming a force to be reckoned with in the northeastern states of Tripura and Assam.

“Very important is the increasing number of Lok Sabha seats we are gradually getting access to, ahead of 2024. There are the 42 seats of Bengal, 14 in Assam, and two each in Tripura and Goa. That’s 60,” said a Trinamul vice-president, asserting that the expansion beyond Bengal’s borders over the next three years was with the core objective of a stronger presence in Delhi.