SPOTLIGHT | TRIBAL TURF WAR: BJP'S BALANCING ACT

PANAJI
The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) tribal politics is increasingly becoming a site of sharp competition over identity, leadership, patronage and political power.
The demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) political reservation (quota in Assembly), non-fulfilment of some long overdue governance deliverables such as budgeting for a tribal sub-plan and a long-promised State tribal bhavan, has sharpened the factional divides, pitting personalities and organisations against each other over who will lead the community, control policy, and benefit from State resources.

Troika in focus
Recent developments involving its three top tribal leaders — Sports Minister Ramesh Tawadkar, former sports minister Govind Gaude, and newly elected Speaker Ganesh Gaonkar — are indicative of how these dynamics are playing out in practice.
Tawadkar is a veteran BJP politician from Canacona, long identified as a tribal leader from the saffron stable. He has been a minister in past governments of the party and was picked to become Speaker after the 2022 elections. He is now back again as minister of sports, art and culture and tribal welfare. He has publicly aligned himself with strengthening tribal welfare initiatives and often espoused the promise of a Tribal Bhavan, which is yet to be fulfilled more than a decade after it was first made by the saffron party.
The leader who represents Canacona had rebelled and quit the party to contest as an Independent in 2017, costing the party the seat when it preferred to give the ticket to its other leader from the constituency — Vijay Pai Khot.
Gaude, on the other hand, is a new entrant into the saffron fold. The former minister and MLA from Priol began his political journey under the wings of current Agriculture Minister Ravi Naik and contested as a Congress candidate in Marcaim against Power Minister Ramkrishna Dhavalikar. He shot into electoral prominence when he contested as an Independent from Priol in 2012, when he narrowly fell short of defeating Dhavalikar's younger brother Deepak.
In the subsequent 2017 election, Gaude retained his 'independent' political colour despite both BJP and Congress courting him, to handsomely defeat Dhavalikar. The late Manohar Parrikar, who controversially formed the government despite a hung assembly thrown up by the election, roped him in as a minister and on the eve of the 2022 election he formally joined the saffron party to retain the Priol seat.
In the BJP, however, Gaude found a foe in Tawadkar, and the two were engaged in a battle of one-upmanship, peaking with the former's outburst at Ponda, where he publicly threatened to agitate over delays in tribal welfare measures such as the Tribal Bhavan project, and made corruption allegations against the Tribal Welfare Department which was held by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant. It cost Gaude his place in the cabinet and, to add insult to injury, the vacancy was filled by Tawadkar.
Recently elected Speaker of the Goa legislative assembly, Ganesh Gaonkar is the third tribal leader from the saffron camp, who represents Sanvordem. His elevation to the constitutional post is seen by many as the party leadership's attempt to isolate Gaude by forming a sort of axis between him and Tawadkar.
The rivalry to watch hereon, however, is the one between Tawadkar and Gaude, with both fighting for recognition within the community as its tallest leader.
Tawadkar organised a rally to celebrate the national tribal icon Birsa Munda earlier this year. It was a project propounded by the BJP nationally, and Gaude saw it as a snub by the party. It perhaps triggered his outburst at Ponda. More recently, after he was replaced as minister by Tawadkar and the latter launched a verbal tirade against him, Gaude took the battle to Canacona where he floated a new tribal organisation in a significant show of strength.
Conflicts and flashpoints
These and several recent incidents indicate the turmoil centring around these three legislators, which the leadership in the BJP will be hard-pressed to contain and navigate ahead of the 2027 assembly elections.
But beyond the BJP's tribal politics and electoral strategy to appropriate the community's vote, leaders of older tribal organisations like GAKUVED (Gawda-Kunbi-Velip & Dhangars Federation), among others with a history of activism in tribal matters, including the efforts to include certain tribes in the ST list and with leaders like Guru Shirodkar, Govind Shirodkar, and the late Durgadas Gaonkar, accuse the political leaders of ignoring tribal welfare issues while engaging in their politics.
They criticise the government's handling of tribal welfare while pointing out that longstanding demands remain unfulfilled. They also accuse some organisations, like UTAA, of having become less independent of their political masters.
Tribal leaders and civil society expect not just symbolic representation, but delivery — Tribal Bhavan, welfare schemes, speedy action. Sensing this mood within a majority in the community, perhaps Gaude launched that tirade against his own government in Ponda, which, although loaded with a political agenda, also reflected the frustration of members of the community with delays in governance deliverables.
Projects like the Tribal Bhavan, pending for long, have thus got caught amid blame games, they argue, and have begun questioning if the leadership is truly being responsive and effective with little progress, if any, made in respect of their main demands — political reservation (quota in Assembly), tribal bhavan and budget-supported tribal sub-plan.
Polarisation within the tribal vote bank
With multiple tribal MLAs and leaders, including Tawadkar, Gaude, and Gaonkar, among others, holding or vying for power within the party, the BJP leadership is wary that these rivalries could lead to splits in support. The ruling party is aware that it could weaken its hold and bargaining power, with rival political parties likely to exploit the divisions.
The Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Revolutionary Goans Party (RGP) will all be looking to gain a foothold in the tribal landscape either by courting the dissenter Gaude or by tapping new tribal leaders and escalating the turmoil through public accusations, allegations of corruption, and public agitations to woo the tribal masses.
Paths ahead
The BJP, as the ruling party in Goa, may need to manage intra-party dissent carefully. Gaude’s public criticisms may reflect genuine grievances, but they also tested party discipline, and the leadership acted against him.
The current tentative strategy of isolating Gaude and banking on a Tawadkar-Gaonkar axis to fetch the party the much-needed tribal support at the next elections has its risks, unless the party manages to bring to the table other leaders of federations like GAKUVED for a mediated dialogue on an agenda of the community's demands: Tribal Bhavan, tribal sub-plan and the renewed demands for reservation, ST status, and fulfilment of welfare promises.
For the community, however, the next few years will test whether its tribal leadership can transform symbolic claims into durable institutions, align ambitions of their leaders with the welfare of their members, and whether political parties (especially the BJP) will see it as partners in the State's progress rather than just a vote bank.