Published: May 15, 2026
Dr. Ketan Bhatikar — News Brief
Goa  ·  Politics  ·  ObituaryFriday, May 15, 2026

A Doctor, a Fighter, a Life Cut Short

Dr. Ketan Bhatikar — physiotherapist, Congress leader, and Ponda’s most persistent political voice — dies of a snakebite on the Goa-Karnataka border. He was 38.

Tribute by Dr. Shabbir Hussain, BPT  ·  Published May 15, 2026  ·  Last updated 12:30 IST

Age at death -38 years , Cause – Snakebite, Karmal Ghat

Profession – Physiotherapist, BPT + MPT

Constituency – Ponda, South Goa

2022 defeat margin – 77 votes , Pending SC case – Ponda bypoll appeal

Thursday night began like any other journey along the winding roads that connect coastal Goa to Karnataka’s forested interior. Dr. Ketan Bhatikar was travelling toward Dandeli village when he stopped somewhere along the Karmal Ghat stretch on the state border — and in that brief, unremarkable pause, a snakebite ended everything. He was rushed to the Primary Health Centre in Dharbandora, but by the time he arrived, there was nothing the doctors could do. He was declared dead on arrival. He was 38 years old, and he had barely begun.

The loss reverberated through Goa’s political and medical communities almost instantly. By morning, tributes were arriving from the Chief Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, and ordinary residents of Ponda who had known Bhatikar not just as a candidate but as a neighbour — someone who answered phone calls, showed up at community events, and kept his physiotherapy clinic in Tisk open for patients even while fighting battles in courtrooms and campaign grounds.

The man behind the politics

Ketan Prabhu Bhatikar was born into a family with roots in Ponda and built his professional identity around healthcare before he ever entered public life.

He earned his undergraduate degree in physiotherapy and went on to complete a Master of Physiotherapy from City College of Physiotherapy in Mangalore in 2011 — one of the more rigorous postgraduate programmes in rehabilitation medicine in South India. He returned to Ponda and set up practice, treating patients from across the constituency for over a decade.

That clinical background gave him something that few politicians in Goa could claim: a daily, visible presence in the lives of ordinary people. While others campaigned from stages, Bhatikar was often treating a patient the same morning. It built the kind of quiet, accumulated trust that does not show up in party membership rolls but translates, unmistakably, into votes.

The 77-vote story

In the February 2022 Goa Assembly election, Bhatikar stood from Ponda on a Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party ticket and came extraordinarily close to winning.

When the counting ended, sitting MLA Ravi Naik of the BJP had polled 7,514 votes. Bhatikar had 7,437. The difference was 77 votes — in a constituency with tens of thousands of registered electors, essentially a statistical tie. Congress candidate Rajesh Verenkar had secured 6,839 votes, making Ponda one of the most closely contested three-way races in that election cycle.

Ponda Assembly Result — February 2022

BJP

Ravi Naik — 7,514

MGP

K. Bhatikar — 7,437

INC

R. Verenkar — 6,839

Winning margin: 77 votes. One of the narrowest results in Goa that year.

That result defined the next four years of his life. A margin that thin does not read as a defeat in the conventional sense — it reads as a constituency that was undecided, and a candidate who came close enough to believe that a second chance might deliver a different outcome.

That belief drove him forward through a series of political shifts that his critics called opportunistic and his supporters called pragmatic.

From MGP to Congress — a calculated move

In late 2025, following the death of BJP MLA Ravi Naik in October, Bhatikar read the political landscape and made his move. He resigned from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, where his relationship with the leadership had been strained for some time, and joined the Indian National Congress — the party that had run against him just three years earlier.

Within weeks, the AICC General Secretary K.C. Venugopal announced his name as the official Congress candidate for the Ponda bypoll, with the approval of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge himself.

State Congress chief Amit Patkar publicly expressed confidence that Ponda was “ready for positive change,” framing Bhatikar’s near-miss in 2022 as evidence of deep public support waiting to be fully unlocked. Political analysts observed that Bhatikar was, in fact, the only candidate in the race who had previously won nearly half the constituency’s votes — making him a rational, if controversial, choice for Congress.

“Campaigns were fought, ballots were issued, candidates were ready — and then, just 16 hours before polling, everything was struck down.”Congress spokesperson on the Ponda bypoll cancellation

The bypoll that never was

The Election Commission of India scheduled the Ponda bypoll for April 9, 2026. Campaigns were mounted, nominations filed, and postal ballots issued.

Then, on April 8 — a single day before polling — the Bombay High Court’s Goa bench issued an order quashing the ECI’s notification entirely, declaring the bypoll “null and void.”

The legal challenge had been brought by two registered Ponda voters who argued that since the current Goa Assembly’s term was set to expire in March 2027, the winner of the bypoll would serve for less than a year — a situation that, under their reading of Section 151A of the Representation of the People Act, made the election legally impermissible.

A division bench of Justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit Jamsandekar agreed. The High Court refused to stay its own order, meaning the election was cancelled even as postal ballots already sat in the system.

Bhatikar did not accept this outcome. Within days, he filed a Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court, becoming the lead petitioner in a case that challenged not just the Goa High Court’s order but its interpretation of Section 151A — an interpretation he argued conflicted with rulings from other High Courts across the country.

The Supreme Court took up the matter. A bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta directed the Election Commission to file its reply by May 8. That case was still active, still being argued, at the time of his death on Thursday night.

The bypoll legal journey — at a glance

October 15, 2025

BJP MLA and Agriculture Minister Ravi Naik passes away, vacating the Ponda seat.

March 15, 2026

Election Commission of India issues notification scheduling the Ponda bypoll for April 9, 2026.

March 17–18, 2026

Bhatikar officially joins Congress and is named the party’s candidate, approved by AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge.

April 8, 2026

Bombay High Court quashes the bypoll notification, cancelling the election just 16 hours before polling. Postal ballots had already been cast.

April 13, 2026

Bhatikar files a Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court, becoming the lead petitioner challenging the High Court’s cancellation order.

April 28, 2026

Supreme Court bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta directs the ECI to file its reply by May 8. Case remains under hearing.

May 15, 2026

Dr. Ketan Bhatikar dies of a snakebite near Karmal Ghat on the Goa-Karnataka border. He was 38. The Supreme Court case dies with him.

Political tributes pour in

Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, whose BJP had been the primary political rival of Bhatikar throughout his career, set that aside entirely in his response to the news. Sawant described himself as “deeply shocked and saddened,” emphasised Bhatikar’s standing as a medical professional, and called his passing a significant loss to Goa’s healthcare community.

It was a generous acknowledgment from someone who had, just weeks earlier, publicly predicted that the BJP would retain Ponda with a sizeable margin.

Leader of the Opposition Yuri Alemao, who had worked closely with Bhatikar during the bypoll campaign period, spoke of a man whose public service went beyond party lines.

He offered condolences to the family and called on Goa to remember what Bhatikar had stood for. The Goa Congress as a party released a formal statement describing his contribution to both public life and political organisation as something that would endure in memory long after the grief subsides.

What Ponda loses

There is an uncomfortable irony in how this story ends. Bhatikar spent the last months of his life fighting, through one of India’s highest courts, for the right of Ponda’s voters to have a representative in the state assembly. He argued that democracy demands representation, that a constituency should not go unheard simply because the calendar is inconvenient.

He lost that fight in the High Court. He appealed to the Supreme Court. And now he is gone, and the seat remains vacant, and the assembly term will expire next March, and Ponda’s voters will have gone without an elected MLA for the better part of a year and a half.

The man who cared most about fixing that will not be there to see how it resolves.

The sudden death of Dr Ketan Bhatikar has also become a reminder that even symptoms that appear small initially should never be ignored after a snakebite.

Tribute

“Dr. Ketan Bhatikar was more than a politician — he was a fellow healthcare professional who served his community with sincerity and dedication. As a physiotherapist, he understood what it means to help people heal. He brought that same quiet commitment to public life. His untimely passing is a profound loss to Goa — to its people, its medical community, and its democratic spirit. My heartfelt condolences to his family and loved ones. May his soul rest in eternal peace.”

— Dr. Shabbir Hussain, BPT  |  Physiotherapist

Sources: The Week India · Navhind Times · National Herald India · Herald Goa · O Heraldo · Goemkarponn · Newsdrum · Law Trend · Election Commission of India affidavit records (2022)