PANAJI
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the controversial wrestling federation chief who is at the centre of the brewing storm over sexual harassment charges against him by champion women wrestlers has a ‘powerful’ Goa connection often used by his saffron party to cut deals and win over politicians from other parties.
In last year’s Goa assembly elections the BJP high command, unsure of its outcome, had Singh on notice to stay in touch with winnable candidates from the other side, so they could be “netted” if required, a senior leader of the ruling party said.
When the 2022 results were out, the need did not arise with the saffron party bagging 20 seats leading to MLAs making a beeline on their own for a share of the power slice.
But it wasn’t the case five years earlier when the late Manohar Parrikar-led BJP was a long shot away from power at 14 seats and the rival Congress just three seats away from the half way mark. But it was Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh who entered the frenzied power-broking ring and wrestled out a government for the saffron party, literally from the lap of foe Congress.
Goa Foward Party (GFP) supremo Vijai Sardesai, whom the 2017 results had propelled him to a ‘kingmaker’ had reportedly sealed a deal with the Congress. But Singh’s entry into the hard-ball negotiations managed to wean Sardesai who was then a vice president of the Wrestling federation, to the saffron party.
Sardesai and his GFP’s two other MLAs-elect then “ Jayesh Salgaonkar and Vinoda Paliencar “ helped the saffron party along with the MGP’s three and independents to swell from a strength of 13 to 21. The move had stunned all as the Sardesai-led nascent GFP’s very political USP and election campaign was based on an anti-BJP stance.
The importance of the role played by Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in that stunning BJP coup of 2017 in Goa can be gauged by the celebratory photograph published by sections of the media with him, Sardesai, Manohar Parrikar and Nitin Gadkari in the frame.
