MARGAO
Political bigwigs in the commercial capital are busy giving final touches to social engineering as they brace up to field their candidates for the election for the 25-member Margao Municipal Council.
Religion, caste and sub-caste have all come to the fore in the scheme of things of the bigwigs as the three camps, ruling BJP and the opposition Congress and Goa Forward are all rushing to finalise their list of candidates.
A glance at the prospective candidates finalised by the key players, Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat, Goa Forward chief Vijai Sardesai and BJP leader Damu Naik shows that the candidates seemed to have been finalised taking into account the ground realities ahead of the 2022 Assembly election.
Take the case of the Goa Forward camp. In the 2015 polls for the civic body, Vijai Sardesai had fielded nine Catholic and two Hindu candidates in the 11 wards falling in Fatorda Assembly constituency. The strategy worked successfully as was evident by the fact that Sardesai made a clean sweep of the polls.
Much water has flown down the river Sal since 2017, more so after the Goa Forward extended support to the BJP-led government headed by then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar.
This time round, the Goa Forward has fielded six candidates hailing from the Catholic candidates and five from the majority community. A lone Muslim candidate has been fielded by the party, but in the ward falling in Housing Board area, coming under Curtorim constituency.
The party seemed to have laid stress on the Bhandari Samaj, with Sardesai fielding with as many as four out of the five candidates from the majority community hailing from the Bhandari Samaj. That’s not all. Given that Fatorda plays host to a sizeable voters hailing from the goldsmith community, the party has decided to field a candidate from the community as well.
In 2015, the Goa Forward chief used to take pride in saying that he had got elected four ST community members from Fatorda though the reservation was only for two seats. This time, Sardesai has fielded only two ST candidates in Fatorda area and has fielded another ST candidate in one of the wards falling in the Curtorim constituency.
Comparatively, BJP leader Damu Naik has decided to field as many as six Catholic candidates in the 11 wards coming under the Fatorda constituency. Post-Supreme Court judgement on reservations, the number may come down to 4-5 Catholic candidates in the 11 wards.
The Bhandari Samaj card has also been played by the BJP leader to ensure that the community stands by his panel in the coming election as well as in 2022. Amongst the prominent Bhandari Samaj candidates in the fray under the BJP panel is the husband-wife duo of Sadanand and Babita Naik.
Congress leader Digambar Kamat and rival BJP also seemed to have given a serious thought to social engineering while finalising their set of candidates. Both the Congress and the BJP have shortlisted a Catholic candidate each in Ward No. 20 which has a sizeable Catholic population. Sources do not rule out the Congress camp fielding outgoing councillor Doris Texeira from Ward No. 13.
