Wary of ‘family raj’ tag, BJP denied ticket to Utpal: Mauvin

PANAJI: The tag of following “family raj” in nominating candidates would have been one of the factors that made BJP deny ticket to former chief minister Manohar Parrikar’s elder son Utpal for the Panaji seat, BJP spokesperson and panchayat minister Mauvin Godinho said here on Thursday.
“Perhaps… it could have weighed after media highlighted the issue,” Godinho said.
The bypoll to Panaji on May 19 was necessitated after Parrikar’s death on March 17. Parrikar had held the Panaji seat from 1994 and BJP has nominated Sidharth Kuncalienker as its candidate.
“Now, you will question me, but it was the press that had raised questions. Every newspaper wrote on it,” Godinho said.
He said that would have “weighed heavily on the minds of the party’s central leadership at that point of time”.
Godinho, who joined BJP from Congress in 2016 before the 2017 assembly polls, said it was “hammered and banged into us that BJP was a party with a difference”.
Congress had severely criticised BJP when talk of Utpal’s candidature started doing the rounds that the saffron party, which has been at the forefront in criticising it for following dynasty politics, was considering Parrikar’s son for the Panaji seat.
After much deliberations and barely 24 hours before the deadline for nominations was to end, Kuncalienker’s candidature was finalised by BJP central leadership in Delhi.
Godinho said the state unit of the party had sent two names—Utpal and Kuncalienker. “They (the central leadership) decided in their wisdom that Sidharth Kuncalienker is the candidate,” he said.
“We left this decision to the central leadership in Delhi because there were strong opinions in favour of both,” he said.
Clarifying that Utpal was very much in the contention, Godinho said: “This doesn’t mean that we didn’t want to give the ticket to Utpal. He was as much a fit candidate as Kuncalienker.”
But with the opposition raising the family raj issue, it became an obstacle for Utpal’s candidature, he said.
Kuncalienker represented Panaji when Parrikar moved to the Centre as the defence minister. “He (Kuncalienker) won two times with the blessings of Manohar Parrikar. He was also an equal contender,” Godinho said.