A week after Sudin Dhavalikar, senior leader of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) was sacked as Goa’s deputy chief minister, he said the Bharatiya Janata Party did so unilaterally and in a haste.
Mr. Dhavalikar was dropped following a split in the three-member MGP, with two of his MLAs merging the split legislative wing into the BJP. The core issue, though, was reportedly the refusal of his brother, Dipak Dhavalikar, to back out of the Shiroda by-poll despite the BJP’s repeated pleas.
Mr. Dhavalikar told The Hindu that while the government was being formed after the demise of former chief minister Manohar Parrikar, he had promised the local BJP leadership in the presence of Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari that in case his brother refused to withdraw his nomination from Shiroda, he would resign from the Cabinet on April 7. April 8 is the last day for withdrawal of nominations in Goa. The State goes to polls on April 23.
Did he think Mr. Gadkari had ditched him? He said he still has cordial relations with Mr. Gadkari, who, “had accepted my point of view to resign suo motu on April 7 if Dipak did not withdraw from Shiroda.” On the other hand, BJP Goa president Vinay Tendulkar, he says, “lied about everything”, right from saying they did not encourage a split, to saying the swearing-in was late because the formalities of the split and the MLAs’ induction took time. “Saying that I had promised that Dipak will withdraw from Shiroda is also a lie,” said Mr. Dhavalikar. Sources in the MGP told The Hindu on condition of anonymity, the plan to split the MGP was hatched earlier in the day, in the presence of BJP national president Amit Shah who was in Goa to attend Parrikar’s funeral on March 18.
For someone who has managed to hold his own amid the rough and tumble of Goa’s politics in the past few years, the events of the past week have put Mr. Dhavalikar in the strategist’s seat again. He has been elected from the Madkai constituency in South Goa without a break since 1999 on an MGP ticket.