Sandesh Prabhudesai
29 Mar 1999
The Bharatiya Janata Party is planning to launch its election campaign
this week, taking full benefit of the party’s four-day national executive meeting
scheduled here from Friday onwards. On Saturday, prime minister Atel Bihari Vajpayee will
address a public rally here.
The local BJP unit is working hard for the national meet, to be held at
the Goa International Centre. Around 150 members, including party president Kushabhau
Thackeray, Vajpayee, union home minister L K Advani and 15 other central ministers would
be in Goa for four days.
As the Assembly elections are slated to be held by May end, the party
has already started mobilising people in the villages for the rally, which would be also
considered the official launch of the poll campaign.
In order to woo the voters, minister of state for railways Ram Naik is
planning to announce commissioning of the Vasco-Londa passenger railway service in the
South Central railway sector, which was closed due to technical hassles even after
converting it to the broad gauge. In retaliation, the Congress MP Francisco Sardinha
yesterday staged a rail roko, to take the credit.
As Goa’s industrial development has come to a grinding halt due to
acute power shortage and high court ban on new power connections, Maharashtra deputy chief
minister Gopinath Munde is also expected to announce around 100 MW of power to Goa from
the Enron power project.
After making a debut with only four legislators in the prematurely
dissolved 40-member House, the BJP is hoping to win more seats this time, probably by once
again aligning with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, which is having a major hold over
the Hindu bahujan samaj.
Goa in-charge Sharad Kulkarni, though announced that the BJP would go
alone this time, did not rule out the possibility of having seat adjustments with the
"like-minded" parties. Both the regional outfits, the MGP and the United Goans
Democratic Party, have kept their options open as former chief minister Dr Wilfred de
Souza’s Goa Rajiv Congress is also trying to form a regional front, sidelining the
BJP.
The BJP, which was a non-entity in Goa till the 1991 Lok Sabha
elections, has now emerged as a political force by systematically building its base with
the help of the sangh parivar, mainly through the Parliamentary polls. After
polling around 18 per cent votes in ’91 and ’96 polls, the BJP candidates swept
the polls last year by polling over 30 per cent votes, though division of votes within the
opposition finally elected the Congress MPs in both the constituencies.
The hindutvawadi party had polled around 29 per cent votes by
contesting 12 seats in alliance with the MGP and the Shiv Sena in ’94 Assembly polls,
while its four legislators have performed extremely well in the Assembly. However, the
recent atrocities on Christians in several parts of the country may have a negative impact
in Goa, the state known for maintaining communal harmony among the Hindus and Christians
here, throwing to winds all its prospects.
The BJP may be left all alone if Dr Willy finally succeeds in winning
over the pro-Hindu MGP and the pro-Catholic UGDP to form a regional front and fight the
Congress, which has been ruling the state for last 19 years by engineering defections in
the opposition to form its governments.
The only major advantage enjoyed by the hindutvawadi party in
Goa however is a clean track record of its four legislators, though one of the BJP’s
defeated Lok Sabha candidate has already joined the Congress camp. Due to series of
defections, value-based politics is likely to be the prime issue in the coming elections.
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