The relatively tiny number of 40 seats in Goa and an electorate smaller than a ward in Delhi, will hardly make Goa less significance to the ruling BJP’s absolute necessity to have Goa on its map of saffron states in the country.
With election results in Punjab, UP and Goa to be declared simultaneously, any result short of 3 out of 3 will be a big setback to BJP’s national consolidation through its states. The BJP is in power through a coalition in Punjab and is in an absolute majority in Goa. While the ground in Punjab has literally caved in, it has had to pull out all stops, not to concede Goa, the battle which is expected to continue even after the election results are out. Battle ground Uttar Pradesh is full of mine fields and the Rahul Gandhi-Akhilesh Yadav brotherhood has enabled many equation s to crystallise, including the all important caste and community equation.
The BJP faces an important dilemma in UP, which is akin to Goa. The Muslim vote, which for the first time in its electoral history, shifted, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, to the BJP, riding on the Modi wave of development and jobs, is seeing a reverse shift. The Congress SP combine will reap dividends but may not get the complete muslim vote share. The Mayawati led BSP will get a percentage of the Muslim vote too, which is a very significant 19.3% of the population.
In 2014, the BJP had won 45 parliamentary seats in the country with a high concentration of Muslims. This included 26 of the 27 Muslim dominated seats of UP
Author and commentator Mukul Kesavan writes in The Telegraph “The BJP doesn’t have a single non-Hindu candidate in the fray. Were it to win, it would confirm that the politics of exclusion and ‘controlled polarisation’ exemplified by the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 are a shortcut to political power even (or especially) in a state with a substantial Muslim population. The formula that helped the BJP take Assam will have been retested, signed and sealed in India’s largest state” (the above is a direct excerpt from the column, Wishes and horses – The election in Uttar Pradesh, in The Telegraph, Calcutta on Sunday Feb 5)
This time round, despite the Prime Minister’s efforts to keep the “ghar wapsi” and “love jehad” brigades, at bay, the damage has been done.
In Punjab, the BJP had to bear the brunt of the ‘doings’ of the Badals, to out in mildly. The SAD- BJP combine which has ruled Punjab for a decade has been ravaged by charges of corruption. People hold the Badal family, correctly or otherwise responsible for the state being wrecked by the drug menace
According to published news and opinion reports, and we quote “The Badal family is seen as being personally invested in promoting its own businesses and outsourcing major public goods to friends and relatives. The tolls on roads, a private bus network, a cess on sand used for building houses are a few examples of services being contracted out to private players — mostly linked back to the Badals.
The Lok Sabha elections, had indicated that the Congress and the new entrant AAP, were making inroads. The Akali-BJP combine secured 35% of the vote, the Congress 33%, and the AAP 24%.
Importantly, the Akali-BJP combine won 45 AC segments, the Congress 37, and the AAP 33 of which 31 were in Malwa region alone. If the Congress and the AAP does even marginally better than the SAD- BJP combine, equations in Punjab will change drastically.
One can see now how much the Goa election results will mean to the BJP, more than they will to the Congress and the AAP. Though this should not undermine the seriousness and significance of the Congress and the AAP too, especially the latter, where the AAP has point or two or more to prove.
In Goa, if the BJP falls way short of its official claim of 26 seats, it will do everything in its power to form a government, by all means at its command. With almost every free floating prospective MLA, contesting this elections, wanting to be in power or with the winning side, will the party be facilitating such moves to form a government. Tiny Goa has become a very important pit-stop for the BJP.
