Panaji: It is well past midnight when Manohar Parrikar walks into the reception lounge of Hotel Mandovi in Panaji. He’s had a long day campaigning in North Goa. Two more meetings are lined up over the next couple of hours before the Defence Minister takes an early morning 5:30 am flight back to Delhi.
Are we speaking to the next chief minister of Goa, reporters ask Parrikar. “I have never said no to anything that my party has asked me to do”, he replies detaching his trademark closure glasses at the bridge.
The discussion in state politics over the last fortnight has hovered above one single point: Parrikar’s return to state politics. Goa BJP in-charge Nitin Gadkari has thrown enough hints to that effect. So much so that the incumbent CM Laxmikant Parsekar is entirely missing from the party campaign.
A senior journalist associated with an RSS publication feels irrespective of whether Parrikar’s stays back in Delhi or not, projecting him as party’s face is a compulsion for BJP.
“It’s not a tactical move. Parrikar is a reality of the Goa BJP. They have not built second line of leadership in the state. Sidhartha Kuncelienkar the young party MLA from Panaji holds a lot of promise, but would take a couple of years more to don the mantle of leadership"; he says.
Kuncelienkar, an electrical engineer by profession has long been an understudy of Parrikar winning the by-elections from the seat vacated by his mentor by a comfortable margin. This time around, he faces a direct challenge from none other than Atanasio Babush Monserrate, the independent flamboyant and controversial politician whose panel swept Panaji municipal elections last year.
In an assembly of forty where every seat counts, anyone who bags close to ten thousand votes has a fair chance of winning. And it is these local strongman like Monserrate which is keeping the BJP on its toes.
Even a faction ridden Congress has strong roots in the state. A senior BJP leader says that dislodging former CMs and their family members contesting on Congress tickets will be not be an easy task. Add to this another ten-to-twelve former ministers who are well entrenched in their respective constituencies.
And then there is the Aam Aadmi Party which is trying its luck for the first time in Goa. High stake battle in Punjab has kept its top leaders away from the state. But the local leadership is attempting to make in-roads into areas where- like everywhere else in the country- it hurts the Congress most. Minority votes, which were for taking for the Congress, are being aggressively wooed.
Attempting to make this contest four cornered is the grand alliance stitched by Maharashtravadi Gomantak Party-Shiv Sena and the RSS rebel camp led by Subhash Velingkar. Of these only MGP has pockets of influence. Citing differences with the chief minister Parsekar, MGP broke away from its alliance with the BJP on the eve of polls.
So Goa voters will have to elect a government from all these parties and a host of other independent candidates this election. It is going to be a multi-cornered fight where a few hundred votes here and there can be the difference between winning and losing.
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