Goa was
annexed into India by an
Indian Army operation on 19 December 1961. It was integrated into the Indian Union in 1962. Goa's first polls were held on 9 December 1963. The two main parties
UGP and
MGP were formed with two opposing ideologies. The MGP wanted to merge the state of Goa into the newly formed state of
Maharashtra whereas UGP wanted to retain independent statehood for the
former Portuguese enclaves. The
United Goans Party (UGP) was formed in 1962-63 following the merger of three local parties. De Sequeira was its founding president. The assembly of Goa, Daman and Diu convened on 9 January 1964.
Dayanand Bandodkar of MGP became the first Chief Minister. The MGP and politicians in Maharashtra were elated at the victory and touted it as a mandate that the majority of
Goans were in favour of merger. At the time of Goa's accession into India, Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru had categorically stated that Goa would retain its distinct identity. Following MGP's victory and the raised pitch for merger. De Sequeira visited
New Delhi along with his MLAs and impressed Nehru about the need of an
opinion poll on this matter. However Nehru died before Parliament could take this decision and
Lal Bahadur Shastri succeeded him as Prime Minister. A delegation consisting of MGP MLAs and Maharashtra's leaders went to New Delhi to convince him that a vote on the merger should be conducted in the Goa Assembly. De Sequeira, along with others went to
Bangalore where an AICC session was being held and met Shastri. They opposed the move to get the merger voted in the Assembly and impressed on Shastri and Kamraj, the need to put this question before the people of Goa themselves. He impressed them that if Maharashtra managed to convince the centre to merge Goa into Maharashra, it would only bolster their case for
Karwar and
Supa. However Shastri died in 1966 in
Tashkent and this decision was now left to the new Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi. Again de Sequeira and his legislators met the new Prime Minister and submitted a memorandum that such a monumental decision affecting the future of the State could not be left to legislators alone, but should be put before the people to decide. The
referendum could be conducted via a signature campaign or by
secret ballot. Since a large number of Goans worked outside Goa, and indeed, outside India itself as
expats, UGP demanded that these expats should be allowed to vote by
postal ballot. Parliament finally agreed to conduct a referendum by means of secret ballot but ruled out postal ballots. Now that the referendum would be conducted, de Sequeira feared that Bandodkar may use the state's administrative and law-enforcement machinery to browbeat the anti-mergerists into submission. The UGP demanded that the MGP government resign so that the referendum could be conducted in a free-and-fair atmosphere. On 3 December 1966, the MGP government resigned. ==Electoral performance (1963–1977)==