RACHOL: Post Diwali in a silent village of Rachol which was once a major port town of the Portuguese era, besides the 406-year-old Rachol Seminary hangs a vinyl banner of a smiley Arthur D’Silva.
Arthur D’Silva was the richest candidate on paper in the 2012 Assembly elections. As an Independent candidate, he bagged a meagre 1,116 votes and lost the Assembly polls from Fatorda. Since 2011, he was the sitting councillor from a ward in Agalli in Fatorda constituency. But since then Arthur has moved many places and been a nomad of sorts with a lot happening in his life.
In 2016, he saw himself staring at a charge sheet and was named an accomplice in the Louis Berger (LB) case and was facing trial with the lawyer representing the state being none other than his activist rival Rajeev Gomes. All this happened only because he played errand boy to pick a RTI copy for his once favourite Digambar Kamat. The fact is that Arthur bagged maximum road contracts with Digambar as the then CM and Churchill Alemao as the then PWD Minister.
With an anticipatory bail in his kitty, he evaded arrest. Next to shift wards and contest the 2016 municipality polls, from a ward in Margao with the support of Bhai Naik, son of former MLA late Babu Naik. It suddenly looked like Arthur now cross with Digambar, will move to Margao to contest polls. But Arthur made another two moves in his nomadic political career. He joined the BJP and shed the independent tag and the he announced his candidature from Curtorim constituency to exploit the SC/ST vote bank of Curtorim and Reginaldo’s anti incumbency factor.
“My door-to-door campaign is going great. I have covered Rachol and Raia and my real opposition is AAP. Reginaldo is passé and people are fed up of him and I am confidant of pulling a win,” explains Arthur D’Silva.
Speak to him about his LB case and if it hampers his poll campaign. “I never did a LB contract and everyone knows I only pulled an errand for Digambar. All this is Reginaldo’s tactics of defaming me. The court will pronounce me not guilty. I even stopped attending those hearings,” explained Arthur.
But Arthur is very perturbed by not just LB but the fact that another ST candidate and none other than the controversial Rachol sarpanch Joseph Silva is also in fray for the polls. He feels Joseph can be a bigger spoiler than the LB controversy.
“My feet are firm on the ground. Sadly, my own party members are doing an inside job to defeat me and I also have a lot to fight amongst my own people but I will come out victorious and wait and watch the true LB scam will reveal itself and Arthur and many other benami candidates in Curtorim will have their rightful place. All this before the polls,” asserted an angry Reginaldo Lourenco.
People in Rachol assert that Arthur’s flashy lifestyle of many sports cars and convertibles and his Japanese shirts and the controversy of the LB scam and his involvement definitely perceive a lot of negativism towards his candidature and that people fail to take him seriously.
