COVER STORY

BLESSED by the BJP-led rule at the Centre, the Goa unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party eventually assumed power on October 24, when Governor Mohd Fazal administered the oath of office, making BJP MLA Manohar Parrikar the 13^th Chief Minister of topple-topping Goa since 1990.

After putting up a brave front, the outgoing Chief Minister, Francisco Sardinha, caved in when four of his colleagues opted out, and the Congress MLAs refused to support him. Sardinha sent in his resignation just before the scheduled trust vote.

The BJP-led coalition promises to usher in a corruption-free Goa, the reduction in government expenditure, effective tackling of the burgeoning unemployment problem, making Goa a self-reliant State and maintaining its traditional communal harmony. Goans take these assurances with a pinch of salt. Despite its pious pronouncements, the saffron brigade has crept in with a 14-minister jambo Cabinet led Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar.

How different from the Congress they will prove while honouring their promises, after rewarding both the batches of the Congress defectors with berths in the Cabinet, remains to be seen. One naturally hopes for a change in the administration but what class of a change will ensue also remains to be seen with Ravi Naik being sworn in as the Deputy Chief Minister along with Ramakant Khalap, Digambar Kamat, Shaikh Hassan, Prakash Velip (MGP), Pandurang Raut, Dr Suresh Amonkar, Sanjay Bandekar, Prakash Phadte, Manohar Azgaonkar, Felipe Neri Rodrigues, Jose Philip D'Souza and Ramrao Dessai.

CRAFTY TAKEOVER

The Bharatiya Janata Party, with merely 10 MLAs, has skillfully destroyed the Congress Party bit by bit since the June 1999 elections. They took off modestly by becoming a junior partner in one ministry. But the Congress sneaked back with Luizinho Faleiro captaining the battered ship.

But by then the BJP had studied the ambitions of their counterparts in other parties, and thus managed to create more serious cracks in the dissent-ridden Congress party. They propped up a Sardinha-led coalition in November 1999 with three BJP MLAs in the Cabinet. But in due course, it became evident that Sardinha was strutting like a proud peacock, safe in the hope that he had the option to return with his entire group back to Congress fold. So Parrikar played his trump card, ensuring that the prodigals would be only left with a roofless structure if they decided on a "home-coming".

In a carefully crafted strategy, meticulously implemented, the BJP silently planned the take-over while Sardinha was busy planning is Australia tour. Just a week before that it had installed BJP's North Goa MP Shripad Naik into the Union cabinet as the Agiculture Minister. The move was followed by the morale-boosting national gathering of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in Ponda. The BJP destroyed virtually every political party in its path to make RSS-trained Manohar Parrikar the Chief Minister of Goa, a State significantly important in the mining and tourism sectors.

While the has-been Chief Minister Francisco Sardinha was touring Australia to lure tourists and businessmen to Goa, the BJP smartly effected the conversion of Ravi Naik, Ramakant Khalap, Sanjay Bandekar and Manohar Azgaonkar, and left the Congress with just six members from the originally elected 21. They also assured shelter to Shaikh Hassan, Prakash Velip, Filipe Neri Rodrigues and Jose Philip D'Souza, who had deserted the sinking ship recently to join the Sardinha bandwagon. The BJP thus emerged as the single largest party with an effective strength of 18 MLAs, supported by MGP relics Sudhin Davlikar and Pandurang Raut, and Poinguinim independent Isidore Fernandes.

THE CONGRESS COLLAPSE

Former chief minister and Navelim MLA Luizinho Faleiro is probably laughing up his sleeve, gloating over the debacle in which Sardinha has landed himself, by breaking away from the Congress. Faleiro was cocksure that "every dog has its day". But even Faleiro is left with a near empty Congress cupboard with merely half-a-dozen Congressmen under his care.

GOVERNOR'S ROLE

Governor Mohd Fazal was left with no other option but to convene a special session of the Assembly where Sardinha was to seek a trust vote, because he kept on insisting that he still commanded a majority after cutting short his Australia tour. However, quite surprisingly, the Governor has not asked the BJP to seek a vote of confidence as is normally done in cases where the majority of a group seeking to form the government is not exactly clear.

WHAT A WAY TO POWER!

Being a splinter of the Congress Party, Sardinha's eagerness to form a coalition government was understandably to don the mantle of Goa's chief ministership. That done, Sardinha should be content with the short stint during which the coalition survived. But what quizzes one is the rank opportunism of the BJP.

Manohar Parrikar's outfit has re-enacted virtually every move, for which we blame the Congress. It has supported the very politicians whom they once called "corrupt". The Bharatiya Janata Party in Goa has eventually achieved its target adroitly, by latching on to the ambition of Francisco Sardinha and others lusting for power, but in the process it has lost the little credibility that it enjoyed as a national party founded on certain principles. Anyway, though a saffron swathe has stretched over Goa's green grandeur, the shade is not the right colour but one susceptible to fading.