Goa's new CM carries on Parrikar's U-Turn legacy

Panaji: Goa’s chief ministers may have changed, but the BJP-led coalition government’s spree of U-Turns on key promises and assurances continues unabated.

After a relatively uneventful first month, Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar and his cabinet colleagues, in a matter of a fortnight from 31 December, have done a volte face on several very popular as well as sensitive poll promises. Key among them being a re-think on offshore casinos, increasing value added tax (VAT) on petrol and deflating the emotive Special Status balloon for Goa, which the party had strategically set afloat ahead of the 2012 state assembly poll as well as during the 2014 Lok Sabha campaign.

These three poll promises were responsible for a significant amount of horsepower and traction in driving BJP’s successive poll campaigns, helping it win a simple majority in the 40-member state legislative assembly for the first time and return two BJP MPs to Parliament.

But for those in Goa, who had hoped that Parsekar would break his predecessor Parrikar’s penchant for regressive U-Turns, it was a case of hopes dashed even before the hangover of the New Year party could be purged from the system.

The New Year began with a shocker for Goa.

A sudden 6.5 percent increase in the VAT by the state government on petrol, made the fuel more dearer by as much as Rs. 3.20 per litre in one go. Priced at Rs 52.10 per litre at the time, Goa sold (it still does) the cheapest petrol in the country. Petrol prices in Goa fell drastically in 2012 after the newly elected BJP-led coalition government slashed the 10 percent VAT on petrol to virtually nil, as part of a poll promise made in the party’s election manifesto.

Parsekar justified his decision by saying that when the promise to reduce VAT was made, petrol prices in India were astronomical. “Even though we have raised the VAT again, to 10 percent, our petrol price is still less compared to many other states in India… With this rise in VAT, the government will earn about Rs 5 crore to Rs 6 crore per month,” Parsekar argued.

Vijai Sardesai, an independent MLA who is sitting in the Opposition benches for now, calls Parsekar’s three turnarounds a hat-trick of U-Turns and claims that former chief minister Manohar Parrikar in order to salvage his image as a good leader, had made Parsekar a fall guy by making the latter take tough decisions.

“It is now clear that the present CM was installed as the CM only to reverse the popular decisions by using the same modus operandi of questioning whether he had taken this decision,” Sardesai said.

Two days later, Parsekar’s comments at an official press conference indicating he may give offshore casinos parked in the Mandovi river off Panaji a renewed lease of life, sparked bitter reactions in the social media as well as in the Opposition ranks. The five offshore casinos operating off Panaji were the favourite whipping boys of the BJP for seven long years when in Opposition. The party ahead of the 2012 state assembly poll had made impassioned, moral arguments against the casino industry threatening to “dump the casinos in the Arabian sea” after coming to power.

But once in power, its then chief minister Manohar Parrikar insisted that he would relocate the casinos to deeper seas off Goa only after four years by 2016. Parsekar on January 2 went a step ahead and insisted that doing away with casinos may not be such a good idea at all.

“Their business is going on. They were permitted, it was because of permissions maybe of the earlier government that they are functioning there. Bucking such a set business may end up in someone going to court,” Parsekar argued.

The Congress has called this move a betrayal of the people. “They have fooled the people during 2012 elections. At that time the BJP was in love with the people, now they only love casinos,” says Congress spokesperson Durgadas Kamat.

The third ‘betrayal’ by Parsekar, is perhaps the most sensitive and at the same time the most complex; the demand for Special Status for Goa, which had been a part of the poll manifestos of both the BJP and the Congress. The argument put forth by those who are claiming for a special status to Goa under article 371 is that India’s smallest state, is fast losing its socio-cultural identity thanks to rampant in-migration and steady usurpation of land by ‘outsiders’.

This steady influx and a hurried land-grab, claim activists like Prajal Sakhardande, who heads the Goa Movement for Special Status, is fast eroding the socio-cultural ethos of Goa and making Goans strangers and landless in their own land.

“Goa is a mix of two different cultures and this makes our identity unique, which is dying. We also do not have the carrying capacity if the teeming millions from across the country say they love Goa and keep migrating here,” Sakhardande claims.

After the Congress, despite an assurance from party president Sonia Gandhi, failed to deliver on the special status promise for seven years, the BJP is all set to renege on the same promise first made by them three years ago and once again in 2014, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

“We have not withdrawn our demand for special status but I would say that it is difficult,” said Parsekar, triggering an widespread criticism for his utterances. “When they made promises they didn’t think it was difficult? Why do they think about difficulties only after coming to power?” Jatin Naik of the Goa Movement for Special Status told Firstpost.

Parsekar has not been the only ruling politician to go on a U Turn spree. Industries minister Mahadev Naik on 8 January reneged on yet another promise made by Parrikar about providing 50,000 jobs by 2017. Naik claims the promise made was not “reality”.

“We are working towards creating jobs but 50,000 jobs by 2017 as promised by then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, it is not possible in reality. Now there is limited time left. But we assure to fulfill this promise once we are returned to power again for five years in 2017,” he said. Parsekar too subsequently vouched that the promised jobs weren’t really coming through.