Politicos have suddenly started to reach out to the Bhandari Samaj. If Goa Forward’s Vinoda Paliencar and Jayesh Salgaonkar have ignited hopes of a Bhandari chief minister in the future, we have seen BJP strongman Dayanand Mandrekar reigniting the Bhandari flame in Margao giving a reassuring call to the community.
The Bhandaris are an electorally significant community comprising a sizeable 4.5 per cent votes. It is a card often played in Goa’s politics which is deeply influenced by caste equations. The last Panaji bypoll saw GPCC president Girish Chodankar, who is from the Bhandari community, play the card to good effect putting up an impressive show against Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar.
That the Bhandari community could change political equations has dawned upon parties, given its huge voter base. Going into the next elections, the Goa Forward and the BJP has realised that the popular public sentiment is weighing heavily against them. As things stand, key players in the BJP and the three Goa Forward ministers “ TCP Minister Vijai Sardesai, Paliencar and Salgaonkar will not be in a comfort zone with a chunk of Catholic voters moving away.
It is against this backdrop that the Bhandari vote could be effectively used to cover lost ground. In Fatorda alone, where Vijai is expected to face an uphill challenge, the nearly seven thousand Bhandari votes will be decisive to the poll result. A positive sign for the Goa Forward would be that two of their MLAs are Bhandaris and have upstaged big names in the 2017 elections.
The Bhandari flavour to State politics was first added in late-1991 soon after the Progressive Democratic Front government led by Luis Proto Barboza collapsed. It was at this time that Dr Wilfred D’Souza effectively used the Bhandari card to launch a ‘surgical’ strike on the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP). Ravi Naik, who was at the forefront of the MGP broke away from the party and took over as the chief minister while Dr Willy played second fiddle as Dy CM. Naik has been the only member of the community to have held the top political post in 1991-93.
With Goa Forward now trying to reach out to Bhandaris, the BJP too has quickly followed suit. This was evident when lesser known leader Sunil Naik was welcomed into the BJP fold with much fanfare. The move also comes as a reassuring sign at a time when the community was slowly distancing itself from the saffron party, more especially after several big names including Damu Naik, Dayanand Mandrekar, Mahadev Naik and Dilip Parulekar lost ground at the 2017 assembly polls.
While Goa Forward and the BJP jostle to catch the attention of the Bhandaris, the Congress is playing a waiting game with the odds tilted in its favour having some key Bhandari names in its ranks. It remains to be seen which way the wind blows.
