By IANS
Panaji : The Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance in Goa took early leads in the first dozen seats for which trends came through Tuesday morning.
While the Congress-NCP alliance was marching ahead in seven of 12 seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader of opposition and former chief minister Manohar Parrikar won the Panaji seat for the fourth successive term, with a margin of just under 1,500 votes.
Panaji was a toughly fought seat, with just Parrikar fighting the Congress.
There are a total of 40 seats in the Goa assembly. Trends could change as the results unfold fully, possibly by noon today.
Counting of votes had got underway in Panjim in north Goa and Margao in the southern part of the coastal state at about 8 a.m. to decide the fate of the 202 candidates who contested the bitterly fought polls.
Of the 40 constituencies, 19 are in north Goa and 21 in south Goa.
Officials said data management teams have conducted dummy result testing to prepare for online transmission of the results to the Election Commission of India through GENESYS software.
Goa boasts of being the first state where the Election Commission used this software in 1999.