PANAJI/VASCO
Before Goa goes to polls in 2022, MGP leader Sudin Dhavalikar may well have outdone Bollywood actor Dharmendra’s ‘suicide’ histrionics from atop a water tank in the blockbuster film Sholay.
The former deputy Chief Minister once again likened aligning MGP’s political interests with the BJP for the upcoming polls to suicide on Sunday.
Speaking to reporters at the Dabolim international airport, Dhavalikar also said that it was because of him and the MGP, that the BJP was able to form each of its governments in Goa since 1999.
“I will not comment on the alliance, the executive committee will take note of it. But the BJP has betrayed us thrice and this betrayal, we cannot forget. We will have to think thoroughly before aligning with them, or else it will be suicide for us,” Dhavalikar said, while once again not entirely ruling out any truck with the BJP for the polls.
On October 12, Dhavalikar had taken the suicide analogy a notch higher, when he said: “We have committed suicide with BJP on three occasions, the fourth suicide will be amount to squeezing one’s throat”.
The MGP leader said that no political party would tolerate the manner in which the BJP treated his party.
“From 1999 whenever the BJP government was formed, Sudin Dhavalikar’s contribution has been huge. Only one person knows this because when both sides used to talk, we would speak to Manohar Parrikar. The only other person who knew what was happening was their treasurer Sanjiv Desai. All the others were pawns... the king’s pawns. They did not know anything,” the MGP leader said.
“From 1999 till today, whenever BJP formed a government, these governments were formed because of the MGP,” he also said.
The BJP leadership in the state has also yo-yoed over starting alliance parleys with the MGP.
While Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and BJP state president Sadanand Shet Tanavade initially said that the BJP would go it alone to the polls, their hard stance appeared to mellow with the arrival of former Maharashtra Chief Minister and BJP’s Goa desk in-charge Devendra Fadnavis on the scene.
While Fadnavis then said that doors for an alliance are open, Union Home Minister Amit Shah publicly thundered on Thursday that the party would look for a full majority on its own.
Two days after Shah’s diktat, Tanavade made a public appeal to regional parties, including the MGP and Goa Forward, to join the BJP for alliance parleys.
Dhavalikar, however, insists that the BJP does not give local political parties the right treatment.
“When they do not give the political party of the soil the right kind of treatment, did give it its right respect, they know what their situation is,” Dhavalikar said.
Meanwhile, in a separate interview to a media outlet, the Sudin’s younger brother, Dipak Dhavalikar, who officially heads the MGP, asserted there the party is not in talks and ruled out alliance with the ruling party.
Dipak also said in the interview that the MGP is open to striking alliances with the Congress and other parties in the fray.
