Goa’s oldest regional party, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) with Lion as its symbol, is on the verge of extinction.
During the February Assembly elections the party was pompously roaring that it would have nothing to do with the BJP and time and again reiterated that it would never work under Pramod Sawant. But after the results on 10th March, a politically shattered Sudin Dhavlikar had to eat the humble pie and go begging to the BJP on his knees for a cabinet berth. It was a moment when the MGP Supremo lost all his self-respect. No wonder it has been said that Politics makes strange bedfellows.
The BJP which opened its account in Goa at the 1994 assembly polls by contesting as a junior alliance partner of the MGP has over the years methodically mauled and decimated Goa’s oldest political party.
After the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP will ask the MGP to merge it’s now decimated outfit and embrace the Lotus or will be shown the door. That will draw the curtains and bring to an end the Party which governed Goa after Liberation for almost two decades. BJP will tactfully put the now comatose Lion to pasture ending a chapter in Goa’s Political history. And that will be an inglorious betrayal of great souls like Goa’s first Chief Minister Dayanand Balkrishna Bandodkar of cherished memory.
