As AAP bites into Congress’ vote pie, it’s bliss for Goa BJP

If a public debate between politicians were a substitute for the measure of electoral success, the Aam Aadmi Party would have had its nose ahead in the race for the 2022 Goa Assembly polls. The BJP would come a close second, and the Congress party would not even appear on the margins of the contest.

This week’s public debate between Delhi Power Minister Satyendra Jain and his Goa counterpart Nilesh Cabral over the merits of power tariffs implemented in their respective states was inadvertently wired in favour of the Arvind Kejriwal-led party.

Jain was defending AAP’s poll promise to Goan voters to provide for free 300 units of electricity to domestic consumers, if the party was voted to power. On the other hand, Cabral was defending an unenviable position, which included a chequered power billing system that has resulted in inconsistent, inflated power billing and a surge in recurring power cuts in monsoon-hit Goa.

Jain appeared to have his nose ahead in the debate, and while Cabral stood his ground well, the construct of the debate appeared to be loaded against him.

But irrespective of the blows traded during the AAP-BJP debate, the high-profile exercise may have driven home one conclusive point: the political irrelevance of the Congress party, which had dominated state politics for decades leading into the 2010s.

The travails of the Congress in Goa mirror the chaos in the northern state of Punjab, where the party’s lacklustre attempt to drive home a formula of compromise between its top leaders has sapped its cadre of confidence and energy, especially in a state where polls are just a few months away. Assembly polls in Goa are also scheduled to be held in early 2022.

State Congress president Girish Chodankar, whose leadership has been challenged by party veterans like former chief minister Luizinho Faleiro, South Goa MP Francisco Sardinha and several other Congress leaders has, for now, been allowed to continue in the top slot after a meeting with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi in the national capital last week in the presence of All-India Congress Committee general secretary in-charge of Goa Dinesh Gundu Rao.

At the most, the Congress’ ‘compromise’ arrangement in Goa is akin to trying to put together a complex fracture with a band-aid strip!

And the dissonance at the top appears to be telling. The party appears to have lost early ground in the run up to the polls, a gap that is being filled by the Aam Aadmi Party.

The 2022 Assembly poll isn’t AAP’s first election campaign in the coastal state. Ahead of the 2017 Assembly polls, Kejriwal had tried to engineer confusion by claiming that the party would win 35-40 Assembly seats – nearly all in the 40-member Assembly, as it has done in Delhi. Eventually, the party failed to win a single seat, with its candidates losing their deposits in most constituencies. But the party did manage to make inroads into the Congress’ core Christian-dominated constituencies, especially in South Goa.

The AAP has come some way since 2017, especially when it comes to beating the Congress in the social media and visibility game, while also winning its first electoral contest, a Zilla Panchayat seat. The steady stream of defections of its MLAs— 13 Congress MLAs, many of them Catholic, have joined the BJP since 2017 — has also triggered a wave of dissent amongst the party’s traditional vote-bank, which now seems to be warming up to the roll of Kejriwal’s war drums. The rise in the relevance of the AAP in Goa’s politics also stands to benefit the ruling BJP, which is well aware that a split in the Christian vote -- Christians account for 26% of the state’s population — between the Congress and the AAP, would ease its way out of the hole, which the party has dug itself into.

While the BJP holds an overwhelming majority— 28 BJP MLAs and the support of one independent — in the 40-member state legislative Assembly, the party has drawn severe criticism over its shoddy handling of the Covid crisis, which has led to the loss of over 3,100 lives in the state.

Open defiance by ambitious cabinet colleagues like Vishwajit Rane and Michael Lobo is just one worry which Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has had to deal with. He is also facing significant resistance from acolytes — within and outside the BJP — of former chief minister, the late Manohar Parrikar, nearly all of whom are Brahmins. Sawant is a Maratha, and his nomination to the top chair as Parrikar’s successor has rankled Parrikar’s coterie as well the late politician’s Brahmin clique.

Sawant also faces a challenge from one of the tallest local party leaders, Union Minister of State for Shipping Shripad Naik, a popular OBC leader. Naik has been sniffing for an opportunity to return to state politics, especially now that the sun has set on the era of his peer — and bête noire in many ways— Manohar Parrikar.

The BJP’s electoral fortunes will also be determined by whether it manages to engineer an alliance with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, a regional party with a Hindu conservative appeal. Failure to tie up with the MGP had led to a crushing poll defeat in 2017, despite the fact that Parrikar, who died in 2019 , was orchestrating the poll campaign from his mighty perch as Defence Minister of India. The BJP seat tally dropped to 13 seats then, before the internal squabbles within the Congress leadership gave the saffron party leaders enough time to cobble together a coalition.