TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: The inability of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party to stomach the defeat at the historic Opinion Poll of 16 January 1967, was evident with former Chief Minister of Goa Shashikala Kakodkar and daughter of Goa’s first chief minister Dayanand Bandodkar alleging that the poll was “rigged and a farce”, even 46 years after the event had sealed Goa’s separate identity.
Kakodkar was reacting to former MLA Radharao Gracias’ comments who stated that the Legislators’ Forum should honour the memory of Dr Jack de Sequeira, the father of the Opinion Poll and that the first chief minister of Goa, Dayanand Bandodkar was out to destroy Goa. Kakodkar alleged that people were brought from outside the State to vote and that people even as young as 15 had voted, inspite of the then prevailing opinion that it was in fact the MGP which had brought in deputationists and people from Maharashtra to vote for merger of Goa.
“The opinion poll was a farce, there was a lot of cheating. Luizinho (Faleiro) himself at a public function announced that he had voted in the poll despite being just 15 years of age and that he had voted twice. Others told him that he was not alone. Hearing this comment the faces of all those who had supported the opinion poll, fell,” Shashikala said.
Initially Gracias stoked fire by saying that Bandodkar was out to destroy Goa and merge it with Maharashtra.
“The great Dayanand Bandodkar, whatever his merits as Chief Minister may have been, was out to destroy Goa by merging with Maharashtra. Today, if we’re here and celebrating 50 years of legislation, it is because of the leadership of Jack de Sequeira and that today we’re an independent territory and demanding special status. It is necessary that we make reference to Jack de Sequeira, because of whom the state of Goa is here and otherwise would have been a small district of Maharashtra. So let us not forget him,” Gracias said.
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar sought to down play the controversy saying that he takes positive things of the past. “I’m not going into the controversy. I see what is positive. We cannot afford to forget the contribution of Bandodkar. I heard that one of the reasons why the Opinion Poll was lost was because people said that they would lose Bandodkar as chief minister if Goa was part of Maharashtra. No point going into it… no need to get into controversy which will get us no profit, only loss,” Parrikar said.
