AAP-GFP alliance puts Congress on back foot ahead of 2027 Goa elections

Hoping to build on the electoral gains his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had made in Goa five years ago, Arvind Kejriwal has tied up with Vijay Sardesai’s Goa Forward Party (GFP) for the Assembly polls due in the coastal state early next year. The launch of the coalition, christened Goa First, is a major setback for the Congress party, which had been imploring Sardesai for months to continue as its alliance partner.

Addressing a press conference at the International Centre Goa in Dona Paula on Sunday (September 13), Kejriwal and Sardesai said that their alliance would give Goans “frustrated by the lack of options beyond the BJP and the Congress, a formidable and credible non-BJP, non-Congress alternative”. That anti-corruption, which worked wonders for AAP’s electoral growth in its formative years before the entire top brass of the party, including Kejriwal, got embroiled in graft cases, would be a focal point of their alliance’s campaign was also evident. Kejriwal asserted that while the AAP-GFP coalition was called Goa First, the Pramod Sawant-led BJP government in the state was “functioning with a Pocket First ideology”.

AAP pushes third alternative

The two leaders also dismissed allegations of working as the “BJP’s B-Team” with Kejriwal even claiming that his AAP had maintained its dominance in the Delhi Assembly for over a decade because “AAP is acceptable to BJP voters”.

Kejriwal’s pitch in Goa was the same as it has been in Delhi, Punjab and Gujarat, where the AAP has succeeded in emerging as a non-BJP/non-Congress alternative.

Also read | Small states, big headaches for Congress in Himachal and Goa

“The BJP and the Congress have an unspoken alliance. The people’s mandate in Goa, in both 2017 and 2022, was against the BJP but the BJP managed to retain power because the Congress allowed its MLAs to defect to the BJP and stabilise their government. The BJP voters of Goa feel cheated by this because they now have defectors from the Congress as their MLAs while Congress voters feel cheated because they voted for their party but got a BJP MLA and government in return,” the AAP chief said.

Drawing a contrast, Kejriwal said, “for the last five years the BJP has tried to break away our two MLAs but failed... in our first election in Delhi in 2013, we had won 28 seats and BJP had got 31 seats; the BJP imposed President’s Rule in Delhi for over a year and kept trying to break our MLAs throughout but didn’t succeed... our record is clear; the AAP has never cheated its voters.”

The BJP and the Congress have an unspoken alliance. The people’s mandate in Goa was against the BJP but the BJP managed to retain power because the Congress allowed its MLAs to defect to the BJP.

The AAP chief also sought to create a distinction between the defection of Congress MLAs to the BJP in different states and the AAP’s Rajya Sabha MPs switching to the saffron party at the Centre earlier this year. While calling the defection by seven of his party’s 10 Rajya Sabha MPs “unfortunate”, Kejriwal said, “They had been sent to Rajya Sabha by the party and were not elected by the people; they cheated the party but the AAP has never cheated the people and now we will thoroughly scrutinise a candidate before choosing him for Rajya Sabha.”

GFP blames Cong for BJP rule

Considering that Goa has, in the past decade, gained notoriety for mass defections by MLAs from the Congress to the BJP, the distinction Kejriwal sought to make is significant. Understandably, Sardesai too reiterated the AAP chief’s argument while lauding the two Goa AAP legislators for “not compromising with the BJP”.

Taking cue from Kejriwal, Sardesai also blamed the Congress for BJP’s continuing run in power in the coastal state. Accusing the Congress of prioritising the party over the interest of Goans by keeping the AAP out of its alliance, Sardesai said, “Everyone wants the Opposition in Goa to unite... the AAP can give lot of good inputs to improve the education and healthcare system that, at the moment, has gone to the dogs in Goa.”

The duo scoffed at their alliance being dubbed a “third front” and rubbished speculations about the Goa First coalition potentially helping the BJP by splitting the Opposition’s vote.

“We are a non-BJP and non-Congress alliance and it is misleading to say that we will divide the Opposition’s vote. There is an assumption that BJP people will not vote for us. That can be true for the Congress, for various reasons, but not for us. In the Delhi Assembly polls, except for the last time, we used to get 52 per cent of the votes, but in the Lok Sabha polls, we would get 32 per cent. Twenty per cent of the vote used to go to the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls and would come to us in the Assembly polls. Anyone voting for the BJP would never vote for the Congress because they hate the Congress, but the AAP is acceptable to them, or Vijay Sardesai is acceptable to them in Goa... AAP used to win in Delhi because it used to get BJP’s votes and it had finished the Congress,” Kejriwal claimed.

Sardesai defends alliance record

Sardesai, who started off with the Congress before branching out as an independent MLA and eventually forming his own party that had no qualms in allying with the BJP in the past, also used the launch of the Goa First alliance as a platform to explain his political moves of the past.

Asserting that switching alliances could not be compared to defection, Sardesai brushed aside criticism of having partnered with both, the BJP and the Congress, earlier and of having served as deputy chief minister in the BJP’s Pramod Sawant-led dispensation between March and July 2019.

Also read | Goa alliance tussle: AAP, Congress vie for Sardesai’s GFP ahead of 2027 polls

Sardesai said the Congress’s expectation of support from the GFP for forming the government in 2017, when the Congress had emerged as the single largest party in the 40-member Goa Assembly with 17 MLAs against the BJP’s 13 while the GFP had bagged three seats, was misplaced as “you (Congress) had not done any pre-poll alliance with GFP at the time”.

“You have to have a pre-poll alliance to have a post-poll expectation. Secondly, I supported Manohar Parrikar (the late BJP stalwart who last served as Goa CM between March 2017 and March 2019) and not the BJP,” Sardesai said, claiming he had merely continued being part of the BJP government, and became deputy CM under Sawant, after Parrikar moved to the Centre as Union Defence Minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

We are a non-BJP and non-Congress alliance and it is misleading to say that we will divide the Opposition’s vote. There is an assumption that BJP people will not vote for us.

In the 2022 polls, Sardesai’s GFP had entered into a pre-poll alliance with the Congress and contested on three seats, of which it bagged only one – Sardesai’s home-turf of Fatorda. The GFP chief said that despite being out of power in the state since 2012, the Congress was still not serious about winning and its failure to get its act together was a factor in his decision to form a “serious and credible alliance” with the AAP.

AAP-GFP alliance rattles Congress

For the Congress, the coming together of AAP and GFP poses serious electoral challenges in a state that has a tiny electorate that, inevitably, throws up close contests. A multi-polar election is bound to weaken the Congress’s victory prospects, particularly since the party itself is a deeply divided house.

As reported earlier by The Federal, the Congress’s decision to unceremoniously dump its Goa Congress chief Amit Patkar and appoint Girish Chodankar in his place has stirred up unease in the party’s state unit. With Chodankar sidelining Patkar and the latter’s supporters within the Goa Congress frequently complaining of being “humiliated” by the new state chief and the AICC general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal, sources say Patkar had been in talks with Sardesai and the AAP to explore the feasibility of floating a non-BJP, non-Congress front.

Also read | Goa minister slams tourist taxi lobby for resisting app-based services

On Sunday, Kejriwal and Sardesai dropped enough hints about the possibility of Patkar joining forces with them in the near future. Sardesai said there was now, within the Goa Congress, “an original Congress and a duplicate Congress” and claimed that “many people are in touch with us and we will tell you more about them later”. Kejriwal too did not deny being in talks with Patkar when he said, “Whether he will join us or not is a hypothetical question right now; we will cross that bridge when we get there”.

Goa First complicates Cong strategy

Sources told The Federal that Kejriwal and Sardesai were also in talks with St. Andre MLA and Revolutionary Goans Party (RGP) chief Viresh Borkar. The RGP, currently, is the only Goan opposition outfit with which the Congress’s talks for a pre-poll pact have made some headway, say sources.

A six-member committee, set up last month by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to finalise the Goa pre-poll alliance, had made several overtures to Sardesai but the GFP chief’s insistence on being declared the CM face of the coalition before the polls had soured the talks. With Sardesai drifting towards the AAP, the alliance committee, it is learnt, had taken a “more generous approach on seat-sharing” towards RGP in the talks held subsequently with Borkar, a member of the panel told The Federal.

However, with Kejriwal and Sardesai now announcing the Goa First alliance, the alliance committee member conceded “keeping Borkar within the fold may prove difficult, especially if Patkar also decides to switch sides”.