LOSS: The BJP is concerned that it may lose the support of the Catholic MLAs as earlier Michael Lobo had defected to the Congress, before defecting back to BJP!

By Rajan Narayan

GOA dailies are full of advertisements by various BJP leaders including a full-page advertisement by the Goa State BJP President Sadanand Shet Tanavade and Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant in `Times of India.’ The Trinamool Goa Congress and the Congress are also wooing the Catholic vote bank.

On Christmas Day December 25, the normal expectation is that the daily papers will be full of advertisements for cakes and more Christmas dances. This Christmas was hijacked by politicians. It was not a Christmas celebration-related ad but a full-page ad by the Bharatiya Janata Party in Goa which appeared on the front page of the `Times of India.’ It had the photograph of state BJP party President Sadanand Shet Tanavade, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and Divya and Vishwajit Rane. The headline read “Greeting to all our Goan Brothers and Sisters.” Clearly, the BJP fears that Catholics will leave the BJP family. Of the 28 BJP MLAs in the Legislative Assembly 12 are Catholic MLAs. This means that without the Catholic MLAs the BJP cannot get a majority in Goa.
Besides the full-page ad released by the BJP party, there was a separate ad released by Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant with a Christmas tree, the cheering Santa and a photograph of the chief minister. This was issued by the Department of Information. Pramod Sawant is offering to share happiness with his Catholic brothers and sisters. Apparently, somebody must have realized that the big boss Narendra Modi did not figure in the Christmas ad. This is why there is a separate ad with Narendra Modi and the BJP President JP Naada at the top and the state BJP President Sadanand Tanavade, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, and the two members of Parliament Shripad Naik and Vinay Tendulkar. There is also a separate ad from Vishwajit Rane and Divya Rane, so this amounts to four ads by the BJP and its MLAs in ‘Times of India’ alone, which is some kind of record for the Bharatiya Janata Party.
TRINAMOOL STILL KEEN
THE Trinamool Congress clearly has not lost its interest in Goa. It obviously wants to contest the next general elections. So ‘The Navhind Times’ carried an ad by the Goa Trinamool Congress with Mamata-didi leading the row of pictures which includes the only AAP MLA Captain Venzy Viegas. The AAP MLA stressed that he is the only elected AAP MLA and has given his own ad. The Congress on its part has two separate advertisements by Amit Patkar of the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee and Yuri Alemao, leader of the opposition.
The Congress is conscious of the fact that now the BJP also is offering tickets to Catholics. So Catholic candidates who have been denied the tickets have a choice. It was the late Manohar Parrikar who came up with the brilliant idea of offering tickets to Catholic candidates in the 2012 election. This was subsequent to a lot of grumbling within the Congress among the Catholic community whose representatives were not getting party ticket.
To the shock of the Congress, the BJP candidate Ulhas Tuenkar even defeated Luizinho Falerio, the former chief minister and AICC general secretary of the Congress party. This was before Luizinho Falerio was hijacked by the Trinamool Congress with Sujoy Gupta acting as a broker. Parrikar’s judgement was correct and all the Catholic MLAs given the BJP ticket won the election.
In the 2017 election also the Catholic MLAs who were given the BJP ticket succeeded. The result is that out of 12 Congress MLAs who were elected in 2017, eight were Catholic. The shock of course for the BJP was that Michael Lobo who had won the 2012 election on the BJP ticket and had even been made a minister defected to the Congress. Shockingly, not just Michael Lobo but the very senior Congress leader Digambar Kamat defected to the BJP along with Babush and Jennifer Monserrate. The only problem is the BJP has not rewarded any of the eight congress MLAs who joined them with either seats in the cabinet or chairmanship of the corporations.

BJP POLARIZES
THE BJP policy is to attempt to win elections in the states by polarizing the majority and minority communities. The BJP has also now started targeting the tribal people. When the BJP fails to win the majority in a particular state it induces the other party MLAs to split and defect to the BJP. It is on record the BJP offered Rs100 crore each to four MLAs in Telangana to switch to the BJP from the YSR Reddy group. This has been confirmed not just by the opposition party by the enforcement directorate.
The biggest shock for the BJP is its inability to confront and defeat Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi. Arvind Kejriwal shocked both Congress and the BJP by winning 28 out of the 30 vote the very first time he contested. AAP has managed to retain its holdover the state of Delhi in subsequent elections though not with such a large margin. But the BJP continues to exercise control over the capital city and the national capital region as New Delhi is a Union territory. The SC is confirmed that it will be the Lieutenant Governor who will be the boss and Arvind Kejriwal will have to have his decision approved by him.
But Kejriwal has delivered another shock by capturing the New Delhi municipal corporation by a margin of 30 votes. So AAP occupies the position of both chief minister and mayor. This has affected the image of Narendra Modi and the BJP for its invincibility in retaining the national capital. AAP has spread its wings to Punjab and is planning to expand to other states.
The BJP is more than agitated over the response that Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra has received in the national capital Delhi. Unprecedented crowds have joined the Bharat Jodo Yatra rally which culminated at Rajghat, the samadhi of Mahatma Gandhi. In a rare politically shrewd move Rahul Gandhi also paid homage to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former BJP prime minister whose birthday happens to be on Christmas Day, December 25.
I recall that Atal Bihari Vajpayee spent the Christmas weekend at the Taj Exotica in 2006. Rahul Gandhi quoted Vajpayee who had stressed that India would always remain a democracy. Vajpayee had stated categorically that the majority party could not convert Indian democracy into a monarchy. Which is what Narendra Modi is trying to do. He is not satisfied for being the PM but wants to be king or emperor like Vladimir Putin in the Soviet Union or the Chinese President Xi Jinping, till covid-19 came back and is threatening to end his fourth term in office. Rahul Gandhi’s speech writers must be complemented for coming up with the expression “Nafrat ke baazar mai mohabbat ki dukaan khol raha hu.”