How MGP eyes a hard bargain with BJP for seats in Goa polls

The Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) wants to contest 16 of the 40 seats and has staked claim on Shiroda, held by the BJPWith assembly elections in Goa approaching fast, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), an ally of the ruling BJP, is seeking its pound of flesh. The party, which has a minister in the cabinet—in Ramkrishna ‘Sudin’ Dhavalikar (power)—has staked claim on seats held by the BJP and also said it is eyeing 16 of the 40 constituencies for contesting in the polls due in early 2027.“We are preparing to contest from 16 seats,” said MGP president and former minister Pandurang ‘Deepak’ Dhavalikar, indicating however that they were open to an alliance with the BJP. If contesting the polls separately, the MGP was likely to win at least five seats.Deepak has also staked claim to the Shiroda seat, held by the BJP, and added that party workers wanted him to fight from that constituency. “I am most [likely] contesting from Shiroda, but it depends on the alliance [with BJP],” he added.In 2019, Deepak had contested a bypoll from Shiroda against water resources minister Subhash Shirodkar, who had defected from the Congress to the BJP, and lost by a mere 76 votes. Deepak is a former MLA from Priol, which he represented for two terms before losing to Govind Gaude, an Independent, in 2017. In 2022, Gaude defeated him as a BJP nominee by just over 200 votes. Gaude, a tribal leader, is a trenchant critic of the Dhavalikar brothers. Priol has a sizeable number of tribal voters. On his part, Shirodkar has dared Deepak to fight from Priol and said he would defeat him again like in 2019. Sudin is likely to contest from the Ponda seat, which is vacant after the demise of agriculture minister and former chief minister Ravi Naik. The MGP claims that Ponda, seen as the cultural capital of Goa due to its proximity to Hindu spiritual centres, is its stronghold.Sudin may leave his traditional Madkai seat, which he has represented for six consecutive terms, to son Mithil. The MGP's claim on Ponda may lead to heartburn within the BJP. On his part, Deepak had denied any charges of dynastic politics.The MGP has two members in the Goa assembly, namely Sudin (Madkai) and Arolkar (Mandrem). Incidentally, Arolkar is said to have moved closer to the BJP, and had even met BJP national president Nitin Nabin on the latter’s recent visit to the coastal state. Arolkar belongs to the Bhandari community, which is part of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category, and is the largest caste grouping in Goa.Mauvin Godinho, who is the transport minister in the Dr Pramod Sawant-led government, had stirred the pot by inviting Arolkar to defect to the BJP. In turn, Godinho was chastised by Damodar ‘Damu’ Naik, the Goa BJP president.Chief minister Sawant has also stressed that the party will contest the 2027 assembly elections from Mandrem. In 2022, Arolkar, a former police constable and volleyball player, had defeated BJP MLA Dayanand Sopte and former chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar, who was contesting as an Independent. Parsekar and Sopte have joined forces against Arolkar, and Parsekar may return to the BJP fold soon. Deepak said that while the MGP has seen a series of splits since the 1080s, with its legislators joining the Congress and then the BJP, the party had continued to remain strong.In 1963, Dayanand aka ‘Bhausaheb’ Bandodkar led his MGP to a swashbuckling victory against the Congress in the Goa, Daman, and Diu assembly. This was the first time that a party had come to power in any state in India on the Bahujan Samaj plank. Bandodkar was a member of the miniscule but influential Gomantak Maratha Samaj, and commanded the loyalty of a large section of lower and middle caste Hindu voters.After Bandodkar’s demise, his daughter Shashikala Kakodkar aka Tai led the MGP government in the former Portuguese colony. Today, the MGP has been reduced to a pale shadow of its former self and is led by the Dhavalikar brothers, who come from a family of traditional temple priests.The BJP is said to be eager to forge an alliance with the MGP to prevent a division in the Hindu vote as it girds its loins for an unprecedented fourth term in power. This has led to the latter driving a hard bargain.In case it contests on its own merit, the MGP may walk away with a section of the Hindu Bahujan votes, this eating into the BJP’s core votebase. In what may add to the BJP’s troubles, the Shiv Sena led by Maharashtra deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde is planning to contest on its own in Goa despite being part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The Shiv Sena plans to contest 21 seats to secure its first political opening outside Maharashtra, using a sons-of-soil plank.The Shiv Sena has deputed former Lok Sabha MP Gajanan Kirtikar and former Mumbai corporators Dilip Naik and Raju Pednekar to lead the charge in Goa. Pednekar and Naik are in charge of North and South Goa, respectively. The party is looking at focusing on the Hindu and pro-Marathi votes.The only time a Shiv Sena nominee has been elected to a state assembly outside Maharashtra was Pavan Kumar Pandey from Uttar Pradesh’s Akbarpur in 1991 at the zenith of the Ram Mandir movement. This was because of the inability of the leadership of the undivided Shiv Sena to manage the contradictions between its nativist, pro-Marathi manoos position in Maharashtra and its subsequent shift to Hindutva in the 1980s, when Sena supremo Bal Thackeray emerged as a Hindu mascot.In 2022, the undivided Shiv Sena fielded 10 candidates in Goa in an alliance with the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which contested on 13 seats, and secured 1,726 votes, which was 0.18 per cent of the votes polled.Maharashtra and Goa have strong historical and cultural linkages, and Marathi-speaking Hindus from Goa are part of the Shiv Sena’s cohort in Mumbai and elsewhere. Leaders from the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) like Anil Desai, the Lok Sabha MP from Mumbai South Central, MLA Sanjay Potnis, and former MLA Prakash Phatarpekar hail from Goa. In the Shiv Sena, Dilip Naik and Raju Pednekar too have roots in Goa.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- Ends