Team Herald
PANJIM: A decisive meeting of the core committee of the BJP, along with Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar will be held with the MGP leadership on September 21-22 in the presence of Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari, to finalise the seat sharing arrangement between the two parties.
The in principle agreement of the alliance continuing for the 2017 elections was reached during a meeting of Parrikar and MGP’s Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar at the latter’s residence when Parrikar called on him, during the Ganesh festival week. But there are riders to this agreement. MGP is planning to strike a hard bargain of a minimum of 12 seats, four more than the last time, and there is no guarantee that MGP will not increase this demand. The MGP is aware that this time around, its support to the BJP will be critical to the ruling party’s hopes of returning to power. “We have identified 12 seats which we are firm about contesting. This isn’t the final figure we have in mind but we have had cordial discussions so far,” a senior MGP leader told Herald. But this list of 12 has some contentious seats where the BJP either has sitting MLAs or where the sitting MLA will contest on the BJP ticket (in Dabolim).
The 12 seats that the MGP has asked for are Bicholim, Porvorim, Dabolim, Valpoi, Shiroda, St Cruz, Quepem, Canacona and Cumbharjua besides the three seats they currently hold, Priol, Madkaim and Ponda. According to BJP insiders of the 12, there will be conflict over Shiroda, Canacona and Dabolim. The BJP holds the first two while in Dabolim, it plans to field Mauvin Godinho who will switch parties formally. In Canacona, the BJP may even look at changing its candidate.
The presence of Gadkari at this meeting is extremely significant given his proximity to Sudin Dhavlikar. Dhavlikar is literally indebted to Gadkari for the clearance of several highway and infrastructure projects. A senior national leader of the BJP also confirmed to Herald that Gadkari will be the key to freezing the seat sharing formula. The core committee members who will be present for the meeting will include Environment Minister Rajendra Arlekar, Datta Kholkar (State Vice President), Sanjiv Desai (Treasurer), Vinay Tendulkar (State President) and Sadanand Seth Tanawade (OSD to Chief Minister).
The meeting also assumes significance since the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) has given the MGP a deadline of September 30 to pull out of the alliance with the BJP and be assured of BBSM’s support. The BBSM led by the RSS rebel Subhash Velingkar has decided to back forces which can defeat BJP candidates in the Assembly elections. BBSM insists that the government withdraws all grants given to English medium schools, under its policy of grants for mother tongue languages only, even though this goes against section 3 of Goa’s Official Language Act.
