DANGEROUS: The induction of Ravi Naik into the BJP and his inclusion in the cabinet may prove counter-productive. The BJP should not forget that it was Ravi Naik who literally sank the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party for the chief ministership offered to him by the late Dr Wilfred D’souza

The victory of the BJP in the 2022 Assembly elections was primarily due to giving tickets to defectors from the Congress. But Congress MLAs have a history of double-crossing and the BJP may regret importing them….

By Rajan Narayan

IT has happened just as we predicted. The defectors from the Congress got the largest slice of the government cake. The loyalist karyakarta have to be contented with crumbs left over.In fact at the time of writing, only one original BJP loyalist, Nilesh Cabral, has got a berth in the mega swearing-in ceremony held at the Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Indoor Stadium.
Even Congress defectors who joined the BJP opportunistically just before the Valentine’s Day polls got a cabinet berth. I am referring to Ravi Naik, the former chief minister of the Congress government, who jumped on to the BJP’s double-engine train just before it left the platform.
Another opportunist who was a respectable Independent, Rohan Khaunte, also joined the BJP on the eve of the assembly election. The Judas whom the BJP not only gave a ticket, but a senior cabinet berth, was Subhash Shirodkar, a long-term Congress loyalist and the promoter of third-grade education institutes like the Shri Rayeshwar Institute of Engineering and Information Technology (RIEIT) and the Ayurveda College, which do not attract any students. Though the Ayurveda College serves as a cheap source of resident doctors, or even chief medical officers, for private corporate hospitals like Manipal Hospital and Healthway Hospital.

HIGH COST
ADMITTEDLY, Pramod Sawant managed to retain his kodel as the chief minister of Goa but this is at a high cost. Though his bitter rival, Vishwajit Rane could not displace Pramod Sawant as the chief minister, junior Rane made a very hard bargain. Pramod Sawant may nominally be the chief minister of Goa but he has been forced to distribute the most remunerative and important portfolios to the Congress rebels, who enabled the BJP to get 20 of the 40 seats in the legislative assembly.
Historically, there are two portfolios which have always been the monopoly of the chief minister. These are of the Home and Finance ministers. Pramod Sawant had to part both these vital revenue generating ministries to retain his chief minister ship. Imagine the consequences of appointing a health minister who deprived acute covid patients of oxygen as the minister-in-charge of law and order.

GOING MUMBAI WAY
MY sympathies are with the police force which will face the same fate as their counterparts did in Mumbai. It may be recalled that the IGP of Maharashtra falsely implicated Ranbeer Kapoor in the Sushant Singh Rajput case. We will find a similar situation in Goa where the DG Jaspal Singh is implicated by Vishwajit Rane for objecting to his illegal orders.
Not surprisingly the second most important member of the new BJP cabinet is Mauvin Godinho, who was amongst the lifelong Congress MLAs who defected to the BJP even before Vishwajit Rane. Mauvin Godinho has been charge-sheeted with a very serious case of theft of huge quantities of power. When Mauvin Godinho was the Congress power minister in the Pratapsingh Raoji Rane’s government, he extended huge rebates on the power tariff to steel rolling myths.
Mauvin cost a loss of several hundred crore to the public exchequer. The Supreme Court has rejected his plea to close the case. The irony of the Mauvin Godinho power theft scam is that the late Manohar Parrikar tried to withdraw the case, when for a brief while the BJP had lent support to a group of Congress rebels led by Francisco Sardinha, to topple Luizinho Faleiro. The longest standing chief minister, Pratapsingh Raoji Rane, had concurred with the prosecution that Mauvin Godinho in violation of the cabinet decision, had given the rebates. Now of course all the thieves are in the Bharatiya Janata Party.

MINISTERS SWORN IN
MAUVIN Godinho is not the only history sheeter who has been given a cabinet berth by the BJP high command. Among the ministers sworn in on Monday, March 28, 2022 is the notorious Antanasio Babush Monserrate, who had helped the Pramod Sawant government to stay in power after the death of the late Manohar Parrikar. It may be recalled that when the Goa Forward and the MGP withdrew support to the BJP, it was Babush who engineered the defection of ten Congress MLAs.
But this time around Babush Monserrate was amongst the last of the cabinet ministers sworn in, suggesting that he is unlikely to get a major portfolio. This is punishment for his failure to deliver all the seats in Tiswadi taluka. Indeed, Babush himself almost lost from Panaji with a very narrow margin of only 600 odd votes against Utpal Parrikar, son of the late Manohar Parrikar. Ironically, Monserrate’s wife Jennifer Monsserrate won a larger number of votes.

KARYAKARTA CONSOLATIONS
THE third minister to be sworn in was Ravi Naik, whose son Roy Naik was allegedly accused of being the partner of Israeli drug baron Atala. Ravi Naik has been assured of an important portfolio as in the seniority list he ranks as high as the third position. The only consolation for the BJP karyakarta is that Nilesh Cabral, a loyalist, was given the fourth position. Nilesh Cabral is the only member of the Pramod Sawant cabinet who has been retained in his existing ministry. Govind Gaude is the other minister who retains his place in the cabinet. The other ministers sworn in were Rohan Khaunte, who jumped from being Independent to the BJP just before the elections, and Subhash Shirodkar who has been a senior Congress minister, last of all comes Babush Monserrate.

REVOLT BREWING
THE revolt is already brewing. On the one hand, both Vishwajit Rane and Babush Monserrate are agitated since their wives were not included in the cabinet. Jennifer was the minister for revenue and information technology in the outgoing cabinet. It is the JBP karyakarta who are hopping mad with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah who took the decision on not only retaining Pramod Sawant but also who will get a cabinet seat.
The weeds that farmers fear the most in their fields and ironically also called Congress grass are proliferating. When Congress weeds are s planted in the fertile fields of the BJP – other healthy plants will also die. Or perhaps the more apt comparison would be with the mutant varieties of crops marketed by multinationals like Monsanto. Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds yield a much higher harvest but unlike the natural seeds do not multiply. Monsanto seeds are single use seeds.
So much so that farmers have to buy fresh seeds every agriculture season. The Monsanto crop is profitable in the short term but will destroy an entire field of agriculture in the long run. Surely the BJP top brass should understand how the Congress grass will affect the BJP’s ambition of getting re-elected in the parliamentary elections coming up in 2024. The BJP cannot forget that if someone like Babush Monserrate can get ten Congress MLAs and two MGP MLAs to defect to the BJP, he can also get 15 BJP MLAs to defect back to the Congress.

EUPHORIA OVER
THE euphoria of the swearing-in is over. The mega tamasha featured Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the president of the BJP, JP Nadda, and chief ministers of several BJP states including those of Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand which was part of the recent election phase, and also Manipur. A notable omission in the list of the top BJP leaders invited for the Goa swearing-in ceremony was Yogi Adithyanath, who is the first UP chief minister who has served two times and won by a margin of one lakh votes.
After the swearing in came the feasting reportedly every one of the 50-odd karyakarta were treated to lunch. But we do not think the karyakarta can be bought off with lunch. To take a leaf from William Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice,” the karyakarta will demand not only their pound of flesh but every drop of blood as well. Already, the Portias (Portia was the lawyer in the famous play who saved the Jew Shylock) are scheming and plotting to topple the BJP government. All is fair in love and in war. Similarly in Indian politics everything is fair.
A voter from Taleigao told my better three–quarters that in the case of migrants and the Muslim minority community, Babush’s volunteers went to their homes. They did not have to go to the polling booth but gave their voter ID cards to Babush. Babush’s goons even made a black ink mark on their forefinger after they handed over their voting ID cards. The volunteers then using the ID cards that were bought at Rs10,000 per person, allegedly went to the polling booths to cast their vote in favor of Jennifer Monserrate.

TICKING BOMBS
IN another case of match-fixing, a polling official involved in the counting of votes, allegedly told Divya Rave that she should remember the help he had extended to her. Since the BJP had subverted the entire electronic election process, honest candidates have no choice. And even master strategist Prashant Kishor cannot match Goa’s geniuses like Babush Monserrate, Mauvin Godinho and Vishwajit Rane.
The BJP should have eliminated all its enemies. They made the mistake of leaving one of them alive, namely Sudin Dhavalikar. Dhavalikar is a ticking time bomb which may explode over time, bringing down the Pramod Sawant government.