The State BJP is on a rampage, having declared in many fora that it will contest all the 40 seats in Goa, in the 2027 State Assembly Elections. When quizzed by the media, whether the BJP rules out alliance with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) in 2027, the standard response has been that it will build its organisation in all 40 constituencies and booths.
This stance has frightened the wits out of the junior or smaller party the MGP, which has now been reduced to two MLAs. The MGP leadership had to rush to New Delhi to meet the BJP high command to keep the coalition going. After their return from New Delhi, the MGP stance has been that the coalition will remain. However, in its latest response, Power Minister Ramkrishna ‘Sudin’ Dhavalikar has said that the elections are still two years away and that he may not be ‘there’.
After the MGP leaders’ return from New Delhi and after the BJP foundation day function, the State BJP Chief Damu Naik has again stoked the controversy and very specifically stated that the BJP will contest all 40 seats. Off the record, Damu Naik has said that this stance is to keep the BJP cadres in all constituencies active and not to demoralise them.
It may be recalled that the BJP and MGP did not have an alliance going into the 2022 Goa State Assembly Elections. So when the BJP became the party with the largest number of seats (20) it decided to go in for a coalition with the MGP which won 2 seats and then to make the government even stronger, ‘imported’ 8 more MLAs from the Congress.
However, the moot question is ‘Will a pre-poll coalition benefit the MGP?” MGP was the first political party to come to power in Goa in the 1963 with 14 seats, two short of majority and formed a coalition with the Praja Socialist Party with two seats and two independents. In 1967, the MGP won a simple majority with 16 seats and was supported by 2 independents from Daman and Diu. In 1972, the party won 18 seats - highest the MGP touched in an Assembly of 30 seats. In 1980, the party was decimated winning only seven seats and then faced the ignominy of Shashikala Kakodkar, the defeated CM joining the Congress and MGP retaining only 2 MLAs. The party then saw a revival only in 1989 Assembly Elections, the first after Statehood where the party won 18 seats in a House of 40, due to the language agitation, where it supported Marathi.
Goa’s political history shows that MGP played a big role in helping the BJP make its debut in Goa Assembly by forging a pre-poll alliance with the party in 1994 Goa Assembly elections. Previously, in 1984, the BJP which independently contested 17 seats, drew a blank. In 1989, the BJP contested 8 seats and again drew a blank. It was only after they forged an alliance with the MGP in 1994 that the BJP made its debut in Goa Assembly winning 4 seats, while the MGP won 12 seats.
Thereafter in 1999 Goa Assembly elections, the scales tilted and while the MGP won only 4 seats, the BJP won 10, which helped it to come to power after withdrawing support to the Francisco Sardinha government in 2000. In 2002, BJP emerged as the single largest party with 17 seats forming the government and the MGP’s fortunes further dipping to 2 seats. The BJP has won 21, 23 and 28 seats in the 2012, 2017 and 2022 elections and has been in power since 2012 on its own steam though keeping a semblance of coalition, but mostly preying on Congress MLAs.
With rise in the fortunes of the BJP, the MGP’s fortune has conversely dipped to 3 seats in 2012 and 2017 and 2 seats in 2022 Assembly Elections. The MGP has admitted the two parties are fighting for the same Hindu vote bank. In fact, the BJP has gradually usurped the entire vote bank of the MGP in the New Conquests, with only Sudin retaining his stronghold in Madkai, from where Dayanand Bandodkar first contested, and now Mandrem, with Jit Arolkar winning the seat.
Now with a powerful organisation and money power, it is the MGP which needs the coalition rather than the converse. The MGP has to realise that whereever the BJP has ruled, it has literally swallowed its coalition partner as seen with the Shiva Sena in Maharashtra. It is high time the MGP which espoused to soft Hindutva, rebuilds its own party organisation in at least 8 constituencies and keeps alive the legacy of the celebrated hero of the Bahujan Samaj Dayanand Bandodkar, and capitalise on the dissatisfaction of the people with the BJP, rather than get sucked into the BJP juggernaut. It has to fight the elections independently, if it has to survive.