PANAJI
The winter session of the Goa Legislative Assembly which concluded for the first time in recent memory at an unearthly hour of 2.30 am on Saturday, lacked the fire power of an election year and was seemingly a rush-through-the-business affair.
Indeed, there was exciting and significantly important business on the listed agenda for the three working days of the session, the debate on the three linear projects at Mollem perhaps the most significant of them all.
However, nearly six hours of debate had little coming out of the private member's resolution jointly tabled by Vijai Sardesai and Aleixo Reginald Lourenco other than the staus-quo ante coming on the records of the House and perhaps some of the entrenched politicos seizing the opportunity to redeem themselves with populist stances, even if they contradicted past positions.
Apart from a handful of individual legislators stealing the limelight with mostly playing-to-the-gallery oratory, eventually there was little for Goa to take home from it as the BJP-led treasury benches obstinately stood its ground on the three projects.
Even in the face of taunts from Sardesai and Opposition Leader Digambar Kamat among others to do an encore with the Mollem projects by backtracking as the government did with the IIT at Shel-Melauli, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and his team remained unfazed.
Barring the courageous and impassioned cameo by Alina Saldanha, who put on record her opposition to the projects and pleaded with the government to scrap them in an emotional 20-minute articulation, there was hardly any sparkle in the entire 6-hour proceeding.
Nonetheless, to give credit where it is due, the government and ministers did find themselves in a bind of sorts and cornered during the 'Question Hour' proceedings with Deputy Chief Minister Manohar Ajgaonkar and Ports Minister Lobo taking most of the Opposition's stick.
On Thursday, Lobo was at a loss for words after Kamat and Sardesai grilled him for unilaterally deciding to set up just one instead of the earlier declared six plants to treat and clear the mountain of accumulated garbage at Sonsoddo.
On the following day, it was Ajgaonkar's turn to take flak from the Opposition who raised a stink over Rs 40-odd crores spent on promoting Goa Tourism despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
The "show must go on" quip from Ajgaonkar and the laughter it evoked seemingly aided the Deputy Chief Minister from losing his shirt though.
There however was one take away for the Opposition from the session. On the threshold of entering an election year that the State is with the tenure of this House ending in March 2022, the Opposition seized the opportunity to close ranks and be in sight of an hitherto elusive unity of sorts.
The murmurs of forging an alliance to fight the BJP at the next general election found its contours being drawn, albeit faintly, in the House. Legislators of the Congress, Goa Forward Party and the single-member Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party and Nationalist Congress Party besides the two Independents -- Rohan Khaunte and Prasad Gaonkar.
Yet there were the odd moments where there was the sparring on the Opposition side like when Sardesai and Churchill Alemao locked horns over who flirted or is flirting with the ruling BJP.
An off-the-cuff comment from Sardesai rankled the 'Big Man' from Benaulim who launched a scathing attack blaming the wily Fatorda legislator for BJP's post 2017 ascendancy to power despite being second-placed in the hustings.
"I did not form that BJP government. He (Sardesai) did. Congress won 17, he had three and there was me... We were 21, but he went and joined with BJP," Alemao blurted indicating that United Opposition v/s BJP at the 2022 elections still has some miles to cover before fruition.
But right from the start of the session when they held aloft placards with anti-coal slogans after Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari finished his address on day one, the Opposition veterans included wore the intent to unite on their sleeves. Politics, however is dynamic and March 2022 is still more than 13 months away.
