Digvijay Singh, Congress general secretary in charge of Goa, said here on Tuesday that the Assembly election in the State was more a test of identity for Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, former Goa Chief Minister and BJP’s top-most Goa leader, than for the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Rashtriya Swayamvsevak Sangh.
Mr. Singh was addressing a press conference after releasing the Congress’s list of 34 candidates for the election to the 40-member Assembly on February 4.
The Congress leader’s statement comes a day after Goa RSS chief Lakshman Behare, who had last year replaced rebel RSS leader Subhash Velingkar, said the organisation’s cadre would not directly campaign for the BJP or any other party.
Moreover, recently the BJP’s national leadership, through Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, had indicated that a Central leader could be sent from Delhi to head the government in Goa if the BJP retained power.
Equations with RSS
Mr. Singh said the BJP would face a problem in the polls because of the party’s differences with the Sangh in Goa.
“The RSS is the core of the BJP and minus it, the party will face difficulties, because the footsoldiers usually come from the RSS,” Mr. Singh said when asked if the criticism of the BJP and its leaders, Mr. Parrikar and Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, by the mentor of the Goa Suraksha Manch, Mr. Velingkar, would make the campaign easier for the Congress.
"We won't tell RSS cadre to support any particular party," Mr. Behare had said.
On the other hand Mr. Velingkar has joined hands with MGP, regional outfit which recently broke its 2012 pre-election alliance with the BJP. Both have vowed to defeat the BJP in the upcoming election.
While the BJP is contesting the state assembly elections on its own and has already fielded candidates in 37 out of the 40 constituencies in Goa, the GSM has fielded six candidates and has scripted an alliance with the MGP and Shiv Sena.
Mr. Velingkar and the RSS have repeatedly attacked the BJP leadership in Goa for backing English medium primary schools with financial grants.
Declaring its list for 34 seats, leaving scope for “strategic adjustments” with regional outfits in the remaining seats, the Congress vowed to target the “BJP government of U-turns which promised many things but failed to deliver.”
Mr. Singh said the Congress would fight the election on its own, barring possible strategic adjustment in a few seats with like-minded candidates of the Goa Forward and United Goans Party.
