TMC's vote-cutting may help BJP in Goa

With the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress joining the fray in the Goa elections, the ruling BJP is certain the TMC will divide the Opposition votes, leaving it free to cruise through the polls, reports Aditi Phadnis.

With a mere 40-member assembly, no one can quibble about Goa being a small state. Its constituencies are relatively tiny -- 25,000-30,000 voters. That is why elections can be won by narrow margins, especially when the contest is multi-cornered.

In the 2017 assembly election, for instance, the Congress candidate from Cuncolim, Clafasio Dias, defeated his nearest Independent rival by just 33 votes.

The biggest victory margin was 13,000 votes -- the gap between the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party's Sudin Dhavalikar who won the Marcaim seat and his Bharatiya Janata Party rival Pradeep Pundalik Shet, who could get only 3,000 votes.

In such circumstances, defections and horse-trading have been common.

For instance, the Congress had won 17 seats in 2017. Now, the party is left with just five MLAs, with a majority of its legislators having defected to the ruling BJP.

Similarly, the MGP has just one legislator after two others crossed over to the BJP. The MGP was among the parties that helped the BJP, which had 13 seats, form a government in 2017.

This time, another major party has been added to the fray. Besides the BJP, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, the Trinamool Congress has thrown its hat in the ring.

The BJP is certain that the TMC will divide the Opposition votes, leaving it free to cruise through the polls.

Party national General Secretary C T Ravi said: "The AAP and the TMC don't have cadre, leaders, and vote bank in the state. Like guests, these parties don’t stay, they come and go."

The 'tourist politician' theme is being battered to death by the BJP in Goa, said Norma Alvares, lawyer and environmental activist.

"In Goa, while the 'outsider' theme is not new, we don't go around blackening the faces of rival politicians in posters -- the way this time Mamata Banerjee's face has been defaced in TMC posters,"said Alvares.

"It is almost as if the BJP wants to claim that it is the only one guarding Goa's interests and that everyone else is an interloper," Alvares said.

Although with its organisational strength and central backing, the BJP seems well-placed in the election, leadership and governance issues remain a challenge.

This is the first election the party is fighting without party doyen and former chief minister Manohar Parrikar.

His successor Pramod Sawant is well-liked within the organisation. But some decisions taken by the party to bolster itself after its 2017 performance and Sawant's own woolliness about the direction the state's development model should take, have meant that on the governance front, the BJP cannot really claim to be a differentiator.

According to Alvares some of the policies the state government has adopted suggest it doesn't care about the people at all.

"Take sand mining. In order after order, the courts have said the government must halt sand mining because of the enormous environmental degradation it is causing. But it is going on clandestinely."

Sand mining is a deeply divisive issue in the state.

It is regulated by the minor minerals section of the mining department and because of the absence of a firm policy or scientific regime to grant extraction licences, the issue is at the epicentre of the intervention of the courts which have banned sand mining several times over concerns of the destruction of riverine ecosystems.

Alvares said the same lack of thought applies to Goa's master plan for development, too.

"You want to build, but the master plan says you can't. The BJP government has put in place policies that allow you to build, provided you pay a certain amount as fee per square foot. If you can do that, what happens to the master plan? This government is building recklessly in wildlife sanctuaries and forests. Three major infrastructure projects in Mollem -- doubling of a railway track, widening a national highway, and building a sub-station for a power transmission line from Karnataka -- will cause irreparable harm to the forests adjacent to the Mollem National Park, a 240-sq km protected area in the Western Ghats," added the activist.

The BJP dismisses these concerns as being the habitual objections of people opposed to Goa&'s development.

What the party, however, is yet to come to terms with is realpolitik.

Parrikar's stature was such that in 2017, he brought the BJP back to victory from the jaws of defeat by striking strategic alliances.

The MGP was the party's most notable alliance partner after the 2017 polls. It won three seats and supported the BJP to form the Parrikar-led government.

After Parrikar's death, Dhavalikar made a pitch to take charge as chief minister but settled for deputy CM in the Pramod Sawant government. He was dropped from the cabinet within days after two of the three party MLAs defected to the BJP.

The MGP is unlikely to help the BJP this time around.

Judging from news filtering from the BJP headquarters, the party may replace as many as 15 to 20 per cent of its sitting MLAs. That may be another shock to the system.

The outcome of the Goa election, Alvares said, is too close to call.