The Congress party may have changed PCC Presidents in Punjab, J&K, Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand in last 4 months but it is yet to turn its attention towards Goa which went to polls last year in February 2012 along with Punjab and Uttar Pradesh and where the Congress party got a royal drubbing at the hands of BJP.
A number of Congress functionaries’ have been making a bee line to Delhi to impress upon the party High command about the need for the Congress party High command to re-constitute its Pradesh Congress Committee with credible faces and redeem itself. They have been trying to make the Congress High command understand that the morale of rank and file Congress party worker had reached all time low and they anxiously looking towards Delhi to give them a new PCC Chief who could resurrect the party from the grass root level.
Ideally, both GPCC President Subhash Shirodkar and the AICC Goa-in Charge Jagmeet Singh Brar should have resigned from their respective posts taking moral responsibility for the defeat of the party which could manage to get just 08 out of the total of 40 seats. Yet they have been asked to continue and the Congress party in Goa seems to be in a state of coma.
One of the reasons for this could be that Goa just has two MPs and since last few elections both BJP and Congress party have been getting one seat each. Obviously, Goa does not get the kind of attention any other State in the cow belt could have got.
Unfortunately, Goa during the Congress rule since 2007 became a cesspool of corruption and a destruction of the basic fabric of the democracy for which our country stands and this had been allowed to happen because as a party , neither the Chief Minister Digambar Kamat had the guts and determination to rein in on a few errant Ministers who proclaimed a s the law unto themselves nor the High command nor the AICC Functionary in charge of Goa(formerly BK Hari Parasd and at later Jagmeet Singh Brar along with P.Sudhakar Reddy) showed any urgency and interest in tackling the mess.
GPCC President, Subhash Shirodkar made repeated trips to Delhi just to ensure that he retained his post and he always painted a picture as the “victim of Digambar Kmat’s gang of four’ including the Alemaos. He always gave the impression that he was just a rubber stamp and all misdeeds had been done by the then CM Digambar kamat. The fact however, remains, that he is a very astute businessman and he made the best of the Congress party’s rule in Karnataka along with Joaquin Alemao as both these together account for 70 percent of mining and transportation vehicles and equipments in Goa. At the moment, he is in total control of Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar for illegal mining and transportation scam during the last 6 years.
Shirodkar also owns up a college and a few big mines in Goa and he (according to intelligence reports) has already invested more than Rs 700 crores in Goa. He was also accused of defrauding a huge amount of money in flood-affected Cancona area along with Youth Congress President Sankalp Amonkar.
Moreover, he has never remained a party man and senior Congress leaders never accepted him as a leader capable of taking various groups together. He could not even organize a single state level convention of party workers during his tenure as the GPCC President. He lost elections twice from his Shiroda constituency twice at the hands of his one time private secretary Mahadev Naik and yet he continues to be the GPCC President.
One of the major reasons for the Congress party’s humiliating defeat in 2012 assembly elections was the political games at play during the selection of the candidates. Both the Chief Minister as well as GPCC President refused to take not of the aspirations and demands of loyal Congress and instead, they fell prey to demands of a few supposed Congress ministers and politicians to put forward individuals from their own families or friends circles. Sitting MLAS like Victoria Fernandes were shown the door to accommodate new comers and at the end, the Congress party ended up as a family Raj in Goa, where 12 seats from 40 are given to family members and the Alemao Family gobbled up 4 seats alone and lost all !!
Obviously, the faith of the majority of Goan voters had in the Congress party at the Centre and the hope that they had on those appointed AICC Functionary in charge of the State, got shattered because of the issues of corruption, scams, the mining imbroglio, deteriorating law and order situation, corrupt and terribly lethargic bureaucracy and so on…
They were all the more peeved and piqued by the audacity of a few Ministers whose notoriety had touched a new high and they stopped at nothing until Goa and the credibility and image of Congress party was destroyed for their personal and political gains. The Alemao Brothers were hated the most because they took both the government as well the people to ransom. Worst still was the reputation of Valanka who tried to become the Youth Congress President from Goa and lost by a wafer thin margin recently and went on record to say that” *The Congress party would be forced to bend its back inGoa because we are, after all, Alemaos”..*
The majority of people bemoaned that Goa had become the fiefdom of a few families and that is how they voted against Congress party with vengeance and brought BJP to power with a thumping majority.
Under these circumstances, the silence of the Congress party High command with regard to Goa is surprising. One of the reasons forwarded by a few Congress leaders is that the party high command wanted a credible Christian face for the post of GPCC President and hence the delay. In fact, this was the bogey raised by Mr Oscar Fernandes in the past on the pretext that Church played a major role in the Congress party’s victory. Last assembly polls in Goa blasted this myth beyond doubt on two counts. One was that the State of Goa has only 27 percent Christian population on record and secondly, the Church of Goa supported at least 8 BJP candidates in February 2012 assembly polls romped all of them home.
One of the names doing rounds in both Delhi and Goa as replacement of Subhash Shirodkar is that of South Goa MP and former Chief Minister Francisco Sardinha who is also jocularly known as the James bond of Goa because of his flamboyant ways.. Sardinha, in a way, created BJP and brought its government in the state in 2005 when he defected away from Congress by taking away 11 MLAS to form his government. It was he who made BJP stronger in Goa at grass root level—so much so that the seeds sown in 2005 became a full fledged govt in Feb 2012 elections. Even as the acting GPCC president during the assembly polls, he became more infamous for his guffaws than otherwise.
Interestingly, it was he who proposed during last assembly polls that that Ram Sena should first start some social work if they wanted to set up their offices in Goa. He was oblivious to the fact that the Central government had banned this communal outfit. He is looked upon in Goa more as a socialite and a charmer than a hardcore politician. Moreover, his king size ego and rather outlandish statements have, at times, become a huge embarrassment for the party.
Under these circumstances, the Congress High command has to look for a person who is able to restore the credibility of the party at the grass root level and who can think out of the block and has the capacity andcapability to undo the damage done in the past by the Kamat-Shirodkar team.
The new GPCC president has to be a man with a clean image and who swears by the ethics and ethos of the party and its programmes and policies and more so in the light of the fact that Goa too has started getting communalized and under these circumstances, the new GPCC president has to be a man of impeccable credentials as well as fiercely secular who is accepted not only to the Church but also to Hindu and Muslim community and capable of carrying them together on an even platform.
There are at least four Congress leaders from Goa who can be given this responsibility.
One is former Goa Chief Minister *Luizinho Falerio* whose administrative and organizational record is exemplary and who could be an excellent replacement of Shirodkar. But he seems to have been enjoying his stint in Delhi as the Congress High Command’s mascot especially in the North eastsince 2008. Barring recent exceptions of Tripura and Nagaland, he has done a remarkable job. Falerio was also made the Chairman of the Selection Committee for Karnataka where the Congress party has come to power after a gap of 7 years. Given that at least 6 states including Jharkhand would be going to polls, his services may be required more outside Goa as one of the key strategists and even otherwise, he does not seem to be in a mod to head back home at this juncture.
The second choice could be five times Chief Minister *Pratap Singh Rane*. But then, age is catching up with him and he would not be able to take rigors of hard work and statewide tour.
The third choice could be *Ravi Naik*. But then his tenure as the Home Minister has been more known for the drug mafia running amuck in the state than otherwise. He has been a feeble Home minister even from the point of view of law and order. Moreover, there is an eminent threat of he being arrested along with his son Roy Naik who has allegedly been the king-pin of drug peddling and narcotics trade particularly in North Goa.
The fourth choice could be *Jitendra Deshprabhu*, former Congress MLA as well as the previous NCP candidate for last Lok Sabha elections who apparently went to NCP on behest of Congress leaders Sardinha and Faleiro and later switched back to Congress. He has been a member of Madhusudan Mistry team and sent to Coastal Andhra Pradesh and Ahmedbad as party Observer. In Karnataka elections too, he was in charge of Shimoga district.
However, he has been in the eye of the storm on issue of illegal mining and in the direct line of attack by both Chief Minister Parrikar and Kamat.
Moreover, not many in GPCC are fond of his working style because of his aristocratic background as the scion of Pernem Estate.
At the moment, the biggest problem faced by all political parties is the problem of mining and the Justice B M Shah committee probe against Goa’s mining companies, virtually all of whom have been indicted in a Rs.35,000-crore illegal mining scam because of politicians-bureaucrat- mining nexus. Nearly all mining companies, including the Vedanta
Resources-owned Sesa Goa and those owned by local families like the Timblos, Chowgules and Salgaocars, were pulled by Justice Shah for several counts of mining and environment-related violations.
Incidentally, the political support for Goa’s mining industry also comes in the wake of reports that millions were paid by several mining companies to political parties. Goa’s hundred odd operational mines extracted over 51 million tons of ore a few years back, before the mining scam hit the ceiling.
Jitendra Deshprabhu has been engaged in a running battle with Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and he can be the right person for the role of GPCC because he knows the raw nerves of Parrikar and can cause of major upset by even breaking his government from the middle.
The Congress party in Goa needs a fighter who can galvanize the rank and file of the party and bring back its old glory. It remains to be seen when the Congress High command would realize that it is better late than never.!!
(Posted on May 13, 2013 @ 10.40pm)
(Ajay Jha is a Commentator and Independent Writer and Analyst on Politics, security and Economy of South And West Asia. His email id is: Ajay N Jha <ajayjha30@gmail.com>)
