This is one of the most intriguing cat and mouse games played on the turf of Goan politics. Both one time friends – one the then (and even now) Goa’s Chief Minister and the other the then power minister and the then de-facto “Chief Minister” of Salcete. That was the relationship Manohar Parrikar and Digambar Kamat shared upto 2005, a relationship Chief Minister Parrikar of 2017 shares with Kamat’s one time confidant and neighbour Vijai Sardesai now.
As Digambar Kamat faces a fresh barrage of legal attacks as the SIT appears to be closing in on the business end of one of the many chapters in the book of illegal mining investigations, the script is one of irony and intrigue. It is absolutely no secret that out of the politicians Manohar Parrikar is really after, and wants to finish politically, it is Digambar Kamat. Parrikar hasn’t quite finished with him and the wounds Kamat inflicted on him and the BJP on that day in 2005, when he left the BJP high and dry ad walked into the arms of the Congress and then went to become Chief Minister for a full term, are still fresh. This was the time when Goa’s mining boomed and with that came blatant irregularities and loot, which took place under Kamat’s watch.
Parrikar does resent Kamat and at the same time he realises that his adversary is one of the sharpest and most wily politicians he has encountered. Kamat doesn’t make enemies, has no ego, is always affable and accessible, qualities which have allowed him to bear the charges of corruption very lightly on his sleeves, And unlike many other politicians, Kamat manages to stay just a we bit under the radar and does not provoke any adversary to gun for him, unlike other politicians.
And yet even as other politicians have been to jail in similar cases or for provocations which are arguably less grave than the rampant loot of the state’s resources, Kamat has remained tantalizingly out of the reach of arrest be it in the Louis Berger case and now the illegal mining case, through reprieves won by his legal team.
Significantly though, there is perhaps no one, including those in the ruling party, who will- either in public or in private, state that Kamat is absolutely clean and blemish less, in his role as Chief Minister and mines Minister during the main period of illegal mining. And yet there is no outrage, no gunning for his political head, almost as if the need to recover the loot from illegal mining is totally delinked from the fact that it happened during his watch.
For Chief Minister Parrikar though, this is not just about the arrest of Kamat. He needs to get the timing and all else right. Kamat still manages to win elections with more ease than any other politician in Goa except perhaps the Rane’s. Margao is one town where the BJP has not managed to plant its flag since the time Kamat left the party. The politics of defection have helped BJP enter other Congress bastions by proxy. The fort of Valpoi has fallen and Poriem is next. That leaves Margao as the only major constituency which is out of reach. Even the most virulent opposition MLA of Fatorda Vijai Sardesai is the BJP-led coalition’s staunchest torch-bearer in the South.
There is therefore a theory that Parrikar will prefer to let the sword of legal action and arrest dangle on Digambar’s head rather than strike with it. He wants the Margao MLA to sink slowly into the quicksand he is laying out rather than end this game by a quick strikeblow. But if there is one man who can swim in this quicksand and potentially survive to tell the tale, it is Kamat.
It’s a battle royale. Parrikar has the power and the conviction and he wants to use to make Digambar pay for his alleged pelf and for his historic betrayal. Digambar, inspite of it all, has goodwill and some would say divine blessings. It’s a space one cannot help watch closely.
