JOIN USGoa polls to be BJP's stiffest challenge in over a decade
The upheaval in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s Goa unit has spread. Manohar Parrikar's son Utpal Parrikar threw his hat into the electoral ring as an independent after being denied the Panjim assembly seat. Utpal Parrikar's moves spurred on former chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar to finally take the plunge and two more of its senior functionaries to rebel against the party. The party managed to quell the putative rebellion by Siddhesh Naik, son of Union minister Shripad Naik, with a largely decorative official position after losing out in the race, as it did with another disgruntled party-man and former minister, Dilip Parulekar.
Utpal Parrikar queers BJP's pitch
However, it is Utpal Parrikar's stance, pedigree, and, more importantly, the local and national media coverage the engineer has garnered that is proving to be the most damaging. As the son of the man who held the Goa BJP together for over two decades, Utpal Parrikar has positioned himself as a crusader, upset over the party's moral decline and its rejection of the principles of loyalty and integrity he claims the party and his father stood for.
The BJP's Goa in charge, former Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis was dousing fires last week, arguing that the party is a family, had norms no one is an exception to and said the party was saddened Utpal Parrikar had taken this step. But Fadnavis also said the party offered him two other seats he turned down. Fadnavis' recent stance differed from his initial snub to Utpal Parrikar that no claim could be made based on a family name and everyone had to work and earn their candidature. That apart, the BJP brought in its big guns to quell the rebellion. Amit Shah was on a visit to the state.
The mess within
With many independents from its rejected candidates in the fray, constituency meetings that Fadnavis is holding deride not only the opposition Congress, Trinamool Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, its former regional saffron alliance partner, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) but also independents - many from its own "family". To the party's embarrassment, its current deputy chief minister Chandrakant Babu Kavlekar's wife Savitri is also contesting as an independent in a neighbouring assembly segment. Her nomination was rejected earlier.
Ten years in government in Goa has only increased the jostle for power and nominations within the party, leading to ugly squabbles spilling onto the streets. Its last post-poll coalition government of the past five years saw four deputy chief ministers and 15 defections, while the administration collapsed, holding the state's economy to ransom, during former chief minister Manohar Parrikar's year-long illness in office. The free for all jostle for power and near collapse in decision making within that alliance left citizens and the economy facing the brunt.
In rejecting and sidelining Utpal Parrikar, the party has upset not just him but angered the Gaud Saraswat Brahmin (GSB) samaj - a community that supported the party under Manohar Parrikar. "This is the second time they have rejected Utpal's nomination, though the party has generally always nominated the children of a deceased leader. They seem to want to sideline Utpal, a young, educated leader. And they are doing this while using Parrikar's name and image in all their propaganda material," says political analyst Manoj Kamat.
BJP's OBC conundrum
The BJP, it would seem, sees a greater advantage in expanding its OBC base in Goa, which gives it much better numerical numbers than the GSBs, even if the latter is an influential business and intellectual community. The BJP has been locked in a contest with the MGP and the Congress for the OBC votes, which are spread across all three parties.
The BJP's main competitor for the saffron vote, the MGP, has refused to merge or disappear from the electoral landscape. In alliance with the stronger regional MGP, the BJP opened its account in Goa in 1994 with four seats and nine per cent of the vote. The BJP grew at the MGP's cost, taking its vote percentage to 34.68 and winning 21 seats in 2012. In contrast, the MGP's vote share declined from 22.24 per cent in 1994 to 6.72 per cent in 2012. Breaking its alliance with the BJP in 2017, the MGP attempted a comeback and increased its vote share by five per cent to 11.27 per cent in 2017, while the BJP's vote share dipped marginally that year. As Goa's first regional party regime that ruled for 17 years immediately after Goa's liberation in 1961, the MGP has deep and emotional roots among Goa's OBC Bahujan Samaj population. If the BJP is to reduce its current dependence on Christian candidates, it has to increase its OBC base over the long term.
BJP's reliance on Christian candidates
Currently, the BJP needs its Christian candidates to pick up the numbers, seeing as they have been registering a near 100 per cent strike rate for the party. When it fielded six Christians in 2012, all six won their seats and when it fielded eight Christians in 2017, seven won, even as the mood in that election was against the BJP. The party's overall tally reduced from 21 in 2012 to 13 in 2017, with several of its prominent leaders, including sitting chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar, being routed. This time the party has fielded 12 Christians. Despite its numbers on the BJP ruling side, the Christian footprint in the administration and government service has declined over the past decades while it comprises 26 per cent of the state's population, says lawyer and political analyst Radharao Gracias.
Internal rivalries between the OBCs and GSBs surfaced in the party after Manohar Parrikar handed the baton over to Parsekar when he moved to the Centre as the country's defence minister in 2014. With its 2017 losses credited mainly to the OBC voter shift from the BJP to the MGP, the party sought to contain this after Manohar Parrikar's demise in 2019. Key GSB members of his administrative team were dropped, and the baton was handed over to current chief minister Pramod Sawant, who hails from the dominant Maratha samaj. This time, the party has fielded 13 OBCs, five Marathas, four from the Scheduled Tribes, two from the Scheduled Castes and two from the GSB samaj, covering all the major caste groupings. The rejection of Utpal Parrikar's bid to contest his father's seat twice is being read by observers as a move to keep a GSB lobby out of the internal power equation to give space to Sawant to consolidate his position in the party.
The fight for BJP's CM face
The rivalry between Sawant and health minister Vishwajit Rane, also a Maratha from the Rane clan, caused the government embarrassment over decision making during the Covid crisis, which was amplified in the media. Vishwajit Rane, who had crossed over from the Congress in 2017, lost the contest for chief ministership when the party preferred the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) initiated Sawant. Indications are that he hasn't given up, and while the BJP has not announced its chief ministerial face for the 2022 election, that contest is still open.
Analysts feel Vishwajit Rane could improve his chances if he were to ensure one more seat from the Sattari taluka, in addition to his own Valpoi segment. Vishwajit Rane's wife, Deviya Rane, is also contesting on a BJP ticket from Poriem - on the seat held by his father, long time Congress chief minister Pratapsing Rane, for 11 terms and 50 years. Now critical to the next generation's ambitions, the Poriem seat finally turned into a family tussle between father and son and went down to the wire on the penultimate day of filing nominations before the elder Rane withdrew.
Pratapsing Rane was keen on contesting on a Congress ticket, which would have taken him to his fiftieth year as an MLA in March 2022. This plan did not sit well with either his son or the BJP, which needs every seat it can cobble together in the 40-member house. The BJP sought to placate the elder Rane with a decorative lifetime cabinet status, while Fadnavis said the respected statesman had been consulted before allotting the ticket to his daughter-in-law. An irritated Rane senior called out both as falsehoods and emerged to begin his campaign but finally withdrew from the fray.
(Pamela D'Mello is a senior journalist based in Goa.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.