PANAJI
The political alliance between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), like it often is in electoral politics, has historically been a marriage of convenience. Both sides have frequently blown hot and cold at each other and officially broken ties several times in the past since the two sides first forged an alliance at the 1994 assembly elections.
So, not many were surprised by the recent wobble in the BJP-MGP alliance, which erupted after Chief Minister Pramod Sawant publicly declared his party's claim over the Priol constituency at the next assembly elections due in 2027. This came weeks after he did the same with Mandrem, where current MGP MLA Jit Arolkar is said to be cosying up to the saffron party, and at whose reported instance is queering the pitch for the Dhavlikar brothers in a bid to loosen their grip on control of the oldest regional party.
Why, then, did Sawant's seemingly logical claim over Priol, which it won back after a gap of 15 years in 2022 and is held by Sports Minister Govind Gaude, create this wobble in the BJP-MGP alliance, which many analysts and journalists covering politics believe will eventually end up in a divorce, in spite of the fire-fighting by the Dhavlikar brothers? The answer to this question lies in another political change which is blowing in the wind: a cabinet reshuffle.
Sawant, who is currently saddled with the task of identifying ministers to be dropped so that new faces can be elevated to give his government an image makeover ahead of the 2027 election, which is now just 20 months away, is said to be toying with the idea of counting Power Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavlikar among those he will replace. This is one reason why the Dhavlikar brothers air-dashed to Delhi on a fire-fighting mission and met BJP bigwigs there.
CM's Priol, Mandrem pitch
A top BJP leader said the chief minister is not wrong in flexing muscles at Priol and Mandrem.
"We had been winning Priol with handsome margins right from the time we wrested it from the MGP's Kashinath Jhalmi in 1999. We lost Priol to MGP's Deepak Dhavlikar only once in 2007, and five years later in 2012, we conceded the seat to him. Again in 2017, we backed Gaude, who won, and now in 2022, he won again as a BJP candidate. It is rightfully our seat," the senior BJP leader told 'The Goan'.
Pandurang (Deepak) Dhavlikar, who is currently the president of the MGP, meanwhile, has already made public his plans to contest from Priol in 2027. Having won it twice in 2007 and 2012 before losing in 2017 to Gaude, Dhavlikar junior lost again in 2022 to Gaude but by a wafer-thin margin of just 213 votes. It is this electoral strength that is fuelling his ambition to re-contest the Priol seat again and will even go to the extent of walking out of the alliance with BJP to fulfil it, albeit closer to 2027, lest his brother Sudin will have to forego the trappings of power he is currently enjoying.
The situation in Mandrem, on the other hand, is a tad different. The seat is held by Jit Arolkar, who won it by a handsome margin for the MGP in 2022. However, Arolkar is reportedly no longer in the grip of the MGP's Dhavlikar brothers, slowly but surely being whisked away into the BJP fold. Arolkar had defeated Dayanand Sopte of the BJP in 2022.
Earlier, in the 2017 polls, the BJP had got a drubbing in this constituency, with its sitting chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar losing the seat by a massive 10,000-plus vote margin to Sopte, ironically the saffron party's own man, albeit fighting on a Congress ticket. It's another matter that Sopte, during that term, resigned as MLA and successfully contested the 2019 by-election to return to the saffron party's fold. Otherwise, Mandrem too has remained a BJP stronghold ever since Parsekar wrested it from Ramakant Khalap in 2002.
A political shapeshifter in Goa's changing alliances
MGP's Sudin Dhavlikar first got elected to the Goa legislative assembly in 1999, when he defeated current Union minister and North Goa MP Shripad Naik of the BJP in Marcaim. While he remains the undisputed champion of Marcaim, winning from there with massive, unassailable leads, it is at the State and government level that he, and with him, the MGP, has swung from one pole (BJP) to the other (Congress), depending on which side occupies the treasury benches.
In his first term as an MLA, he was one among the late Manohar Parrikar's cabal then, which engineered the coup that briefly propped up the Francisco Sardinha government in 1999 before propelling Parrikar into the saddle with the BJP's first-ever government within a year.
In the next term, he switched from being with the Parrikar-led BJP and, when he was overthrown, gravitated to the Congress-led coalition. In 2007, he was part of the Digambar Kamat government but joined Parrikar's unsuccessful coup attempt to dislodge Kamat and spent some time on the opposition benches. However, he returned to the Kamat-led cabinet a few months later.
In 2012, sensing the anti-incumbency, he and the MGP went for a pre-poll alliance with the Parrikar-led BJP and swept back to power, finding berths for himself and his younger brother Deepak in the cabinet. When Parrikar moved to Delhi in 2014, the Dhavlikars stayed on in Parsekar's cabinet but were both sacked closer to the 2017 elections following a spat with Parsekar.
MGP fought the 2017 election on its own and won three seats “ Sudin (Marcaim), Manohar (Babu) Ajgaonkar (Pernem), and Deepak Pauskar (Sanvordem) “ and yet when Parrikar formed the government in a hung assembly situation, Dhavlikar and Ajgaonkar made it to his cabinet. Following Parrikar's death in 2019, Sawant, shortly after he took over, pulled off the coup by poaching 10 of the 15 Congress MLAs. Dhavlikar, who was made Deputy Chief Minister just two days prior, was then unceremoniously dropped and replaced with Ajgaonkar, who joined the BJP in a midnight crossover along with Pauskar. He spent the rest of the term, the only time in his career, on the Opposition benches as a bitter critic of both Sawant and the BJP.
In 2022, MGP allied with the TMC but won just two seats, and yet Dhavlikar made it to the cabinet, albeit after some months and not immediately after the polls.
More about staying in the cabinet than 2027 polls
Amidst the wobbling relationship between the ruling BJP and the MGP, the immediate concern for Dhavlikar is retaining his position in the cabinet, amidst the talk of an imminent reshuffle, never mind his guarded statement that the 'alliance' must survive and pro-Hindutva forces must stay together.
Time will tell if Dhavlikar will succeed with his penchant for the treasury benches, but his air dash to Delhi with his younger brother in tow has seemingly paid off, at least for now.
