Within hours of the announcement of the poll dates in New Delhi, Independent Bicholim MLA Naresh Sawal quit his membership of the Legislative Assembly so as to enable him to join the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and contest the election on the lion symbol. As announced earlier that it would cut off ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party the moment the Election Commission of India announced the elections dates, MGP reiterated this and will be formally walking out of the alliance in a day or two.
The breakup of the two parties should not come as a surprise as MGP had already announced that it would do so. It should also not come as a surprise for another reason as in the past, MGP had broken off its alliances to team up with the party that has the most realistic chances of coming to power. In 2012, after having been part of the Congress-led government of Digambar Kamat, MGP had broken off with the Congress to enter into a pre-poll alliance with BJP. Always the junior party in government, in 2017 MGP hopes to play a high stakes game in the election campaign with the prize being the Chief Minister’s position for its MLA. The party, that is expected to fight the polls in alliance with the Goa Suraksha Manch, has already said that former PWD minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar will be its Chief Ministerial candidate.
The MGP-GSM combine with the support of the Shiv Sena and the Goa Praja Party aims to win enough seats in the 2017 polls to ensure that they are in a position to form a government with the support of others. But cracks in the combine have already appeared as the GPP chief Pandurang Raut, a former member of the MGP, has not only staked claim to the Bicholim seat, but also started his campaign in the constituency, while MGP plans to field Sawal from the constituency as their candidate once he joins the party. That seat is going to be a major bone of contention in the alliance, though GSM President Anand Shirodkar has said that talks are on with Raut.
But Raut is not likely to accept this affront quietly and has already voiced aloud his displeasure. The former minister said on Tuesday, “GSM should not entertain such a party (MGP) that always changes sides and compromises their ideology just to be in power.” That is almost an indictment of the MGP and its changing stance of the past few terms that depends on which way the political winds are blowing. Raut went further to point out that since GSM and GPP are fighting the elections on the issue of grants to English medium primary schools, it was MGP that was part of the Congress-led government that decided to give grants to the English primary schools and then part of the BJP-led government that continued giving grants to these schools for the full term that it remained in power.
The cracks in this alliance, even before it is cemented, do not portend a great future for this coalition of parties. It, in fact, indicates that the ultimate goal of the parties is merely to come to power. The prospects of this alliance will depend on how the tussle for the Bicholim seat plays out. MGP is the only party in this alliance which has any hopes of winning a few seats, with the others merely able to add to the number of votes that the State’s oldest regional party will be polling. The alliance, however, will play a major role in attempting to foil BJP’s bid to retain power in the State.
