The CM is backing the wrong horse
Your police has gone out of hand: Mauvin tells Ravi
Sujay Gupta
PANJIM, JAN 28
Chief Minister Digambar Kamat’s steadfast reluctance to upset Home Minister Ravi Naik’s apple cart, is bound to have a severe backlash on the fortunes of the party. Notwithstanding the pressure built by party MLAs, to change his portfolio, including an open admonishment of the chief minister by Cortalim MLA, Mauvin Godinho at the last Congress legislature party (CLP) meeting in the presence of General Secretary Hari Prasad, the chief minister wants “status quo” till the next assembly elections.
His personal logic, insiders point out, is not to upset the caste arithmetic which according to him, could swing votes in as many as nine or 10 constituencies. Kamat feels that if Ravi Naik is “hurt”, the Bhandari votes in the Ponda and neighbouring Bicholim talukas could move away from the Congress towards the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). And to take his argument further, there is no guarantee that Ravi will not do business with the BJP in the next elections and wean away the Bhandari (which forms more than 95% of the Hindu votes) community. To further his argument the chief minister’s camp feels that the two ministers dropped from the Digambar team, Dayanand Narvekar and Pandurang Madkaikar, were not from the upper castes. With Ravi added to the list, the tag of being forward caste-friendly might affect the government.
Unfortunately, this logic, in the ultimate analysis, does not pass muster. The Ponda, Bicholim and Sattari talukas are well policed and protected by the Dhavlikar brothers, Vishwajeet Rane and Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) chief Subhash Shirodkar, who can get themselves and their candidates elected without Ravi’s support. Poriem, Valpoi, Mayem (from where the controversial son of the home minister Roy Naik is planning to contest), Bicholim and Sankhlim are strongholds of Vishwajeet Rane and will remain with him. In addition, the junior Rane plans to field his man Uday Paleyekar from Siolim.
For the chief minister, it is a bigger challenge to hold onto Vishwajeet’s support in the North and Churchill Alemao’s support in the South than worry about a Congress minus Ravi’s support. And let there be no mistake, Rane and Churchill are power centers by themselves who run their own fiefdoms and have a free run of their departments. Rane already is deeply upset over income tax raids at his residence recently which according to sources in Mumbai and Delhi were kick started by the direct intervention of Kamat’s close ally, the Maharashtra chief minister who used his clout with the Delhi durbar. The move apparently upset even the powerful 10 Janpath loyalist Ahmed Patel. Vishwajeet blames the chief minister squarely for this. So, Digambar Kamat, for political reasons alone, would do himself a lot of good by backing the right horses to carry him through the 21 seat mark in the next elections.
Churchill, firmly in the chief minister’s camp for now, is consistently inconsistent when it comes to political friendships. In a public meeting, he says that Kamat will be chief minister for 10 years. On the sidelines of the same meeting he reportedly said “I need to get my work done and files cleared, so I have to praise him.” At the same time he has financially backed certain Tiatr productions where he has been hailed as Goa’s future chief minister. If there are two things Alemao doesn’t lack they are money and ambition.
In yet another twist, (and that is why Goa’s political scene is as fresh as your morning pao, on a daily basis), Churchill has been backing the chief minister’s status quo theory, because there was a move to remove Ravi from home and make him the Public Works Department (PWD) minister. A shocked Alemao protested, and led the chorus to keep Ravi “at home”, since his and his daughter’s political fortunes and growth depend on PWD power.
Ravi, unlike Vishwajeet and Churchill, has become a political liability for the Congress. Unknown to the public, the chief minister was openly attacked at the last CLP meeting by some MLAs who asked him what “status quo” meant . The term incompetent” was also used towards him. Kamat was openly told “If every minister wants to hold onto his chair so be it but at least let the chairs be shuffled, because the Congress has never had to face so many embarrassments, especially on the law and order front.”
Mauvin Godinho, one of the vocal MLAs, met Ravi later and told him that he would attack him in the assembly because matters had become serious. “Your police has gone out of hand”, Godinho told him.
In a political atmosphere like this, the politics of Digambar Kamat appear baffling. So does his arithmetic.
