Author: Devika Sequeira

Goa CM’s Rs 32.68-Crore Advertising Largesse Ensures He’s in Firm Control of Media 

Pramod Sawant’s bloated budget has helped sugar-coat media coverage around his person and leadership. Recently, the Goa edition of Lokmat ran over 14 pages of his birthday ads

Panjim: Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant turned 50 on April 24. The personal milestone fetched him “special” interviews in almost all the local newspapers with some exceptions. 

In the English daily O Heraldo, Sawant’s birthday interview made it to the top of page one, as it did in the Marathi newspaper Navprabha. 

Preceded by full-page ads that glorified him to almost cult status à la Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the chief minister’s golden anniversary interview found space on page three in the Navhind Times and Lokmat. 

The Goa edition of Lokmat scored over 14 pages of Sawant’s birthday ads – there were six full-pagers in Pudhari – gushing in fawning admiration for the once backbencher BJP MLA who has quickly picked up the art of self-projection and media management.

Goa’s print media were not the only ones obsequiously falling in line to cover the non-news event of a politician’s birthday. Homegrown digital players, most of which exist only on social media, went a step further to provide live feed of Sawant cutting his birthday cake at his home in Sanquelim. 

The “enterprising” Goa News Hub even managed an “exclusive” interview with the chief minister’s father, Pandurang Sawant who welled up over his son’s childhood and his unlikely climb to the top after the former defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s death in March of 2019.   

Till last year, O Heraldo which claims to be “the largest selling English daily” in Goa, had hitched its media group to almost exclusively promote Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress party in the state’s February 2022 legislative assembly election. 

When that partnership sank with the TMC’s zero score in the Goa election, the newspaper did not hold back its punches. With stinging and editorialised reporting it blamed TMC for not holding its end of the bargain and for “forcing” Luizinho Faleiro to give up his Rajya Sabha seat. Faleiro who had moved from the Congress to TMC in September 2021 with an eye on the Goa February 2022 election was elected to the Rajya Sabha in November 2021 from a seat vacated by a TMC MP.

Goa’s print and broadcast media have a long-standing reputation for peddling  promotional content as “news” with little compunction, particularly during elections. The regional media’s notoriety as purveyors of “paid news” has found a smart investor in the chief minister who is proving to be far more hard-nosed and wily than his critics had given him credit for.

While the Union government has cut down drastically on its media advertising expenditure in the last few years, with most legacy media brought to heel, Sawant has given himself a bloated budget to sugar-coat media coverage around his person and leadership.

Between April 2020 to February of this year, the Goa government spent over Rs 32.68 crore on advertisements to media organisations big and small, according to documents tabled in the state’s legislative assembly on March 27, 2023. 

In response to a question from Aam Aadmi Party MLA Venzy Viegas, Sawant said no agency had been appointed to “publicise” government schemes, but this was being done directly through government ads released by the state’s department of information and publicity (DIP), which of course is one of the chief minister’s portfolios.

Also read: India’s Overt and Covert Chilling of Press Freedom

Among the big ticket beneficiaries of the government’s media ad spends are The Goan group which cornered a bonanza of Rs 5.15 crore over the last three years, the Navhind Times group which got Rs 3.17 crore, the Sakal-owned Gomantak group (Rs 2.67 crore), Tarun Bharat (Rs 2.58 crore), O Heraldo group (Rs 2.2 crore), Lokmat (Rs 2.26 crore), Pudhari (Rs 1.83 crore), Times of India (Rs 1.48 crore) and Republic Media (Rs 1.19 crore).

Sawant’s publicity splurge also extended to those with connections to the BJP and Sangh-affiliated publishing houses. Mirchi Republic Media Productions an events management company run by one Bansi Balbhim Khedekar got Rs Rs 3.31 cr in ad support as a “radio agency”.  

Among the Sangh publications, Bharat Prakashan, which brings out Organiser and Panchjanya, and Kovai Media which publishes Swarajya and a handful of others got Goa government ads worth over Rs 1 crore collectively. Even the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) souvenir managed a generous Rs 10 lakh. 

While hardline right-wing publications like Sanatan Prabhat (which got Rs 21.64 lakh) have been generously supported by Pramod Sawant, India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati got a paltry Rs 5,310 in Goa government ads. 

Can any media largely dependent on government advertising as a revenue stream remain truly independent? 

Raju Nayak, editor and director of the Marathi daily Dainik Gomantak which also claims the largest circulation in the state, denies there’s a quid pro quo for the government’s advertising support. It has in no way influenced his group’s policy or bent coverage for the Pramod Sawant government, he says. 

Dainik Gomantak does produce some hard-hitting stories, more than most other vernacular dailies. It also runs a sometime biting segment on Gomantak TV. Nayak says for 35 years he has focused on environment issues, specifically the damage inflicted by the mining lobby on Goa. “My concern is to save Goa for Goans. As one of the leading papers, there’s no way the government can ignore us for ads.”

Also read: Paid News, Ads and the Question of Priorities in Non-English Indian Journalism

That clearly is not the case with The Goan group which has been favoured with the largest package of government ad revenue. Owned by the Timblo’s mining company Sociedade de Fomento, Fomento Media and Prudent Media run the English daily The Goan Everyday, the Marathi Goan Varta, Goan Varta Live, Bhaangarbhuin, Konkan Saad and Prudent TV. Though authentic figures are hard to come by, newspaper distributors peg the Konkani daily Bhaangarbhuin’s circulation at just a couple of hundreds, which hardly makes it a pragmatic choice for advertisers. Yet Bhaangarbhuin alone got Rs 1.32 crore in ads from the government, enough to sustain staff and offices owned by a cash rich mining firm that can well afford to pay for its own.

An MLA who did not wish to be identified says Sawant’s advertising generosity is creating “an unholy nexus between the government and the fourth estate in Goa, with the media becoming increasingly subservient to the official narrative”. His comment is not far from the truth. The Goa edition of one of India’s largest newspapers gave Pramod Sawant’s March 30 budget a four-page government-friendly splash, with no critical analysis to speak of.

In a small state like Goa, small players in the media pool also count to amplify the message. Over the last few days a host of local channels have persistently replayed Goa BJP president Sadanand Tanawade’s claim that the saffron party will win both the Lok Sabha seats in Goa next year.

Little wonder the Sawant government spent over a crore rupees plus in advertising support to sustain them. In Goa TV for instance got nearly Rs 56 lakh, RDX Goa Rs 46.5 lakh, Prime TV Rs 39.7 lakh and Daily Scoops Media Rs 10.32 lakh.

The lifestyle Viva Goa magazine which has carried Sawant thrice on its cover got government ads worth over Rs 25 lakh in three years. It also got a government contract of Rs 80 lakh for its hoarding business under M/S Impact.  

Smriti Irani’s Family Restaurant in Goa in the Eye of a Storm

The restaurant run by Irani’s daughter, Zoish, has got a show cause notice from the Goa excise commissioner for allegedly holding an illegal bar licence.

Panaji: An upmarket restaurant in Assagao, North Goa, run by Union minister Smriti Irani’s daughter, Zoish, has hit the headlines for the controversial manner in which it acquired the renewal of a liquor licence in the name of a person long deceased.

On July 21, Goa’s excise commissioner, Narayan M. Gad, issued a show cause notice to Silly Souls Cafe and Bar run by Zoish Irani based on a complaint filed by lawyer Aires Rodrigues, who said that “fraudulent and fabricated documents were produced” to acquire the liquor licence.

“The licence was renewed last month, despite the licence holder having passed away on 17/05/2021,” the show cause notice said.

It noted that the application for the renewal of the licence was made in the name of Anthony Dgama on June 22, 2022, though Dgama had died in May the previous year. The application “was signed by someone on behalf of the licence holder with an undertaking that ‘please renew this licence for the year 2022-23 and will transfer the said licence within six months,'” the excise department said.

A hearing in the matter has been fixed for July 29.

Rodrigues, who managed to lay his hands on the documents through an RTI application, said he wants “a thorough inquiry into this mega fraud orchestrated by the Union minister’s family in conjunction with excise officials and the local Assagao panchayat.”

According to the lawyer, excise rules in Goa allow a bar licence to be issued only to an existing restaurant. In the case of Silly Souls Cafe and Bar, the excise department bent the rules to give the owners a licence for foreign liquor and another one for Indian-made foreign liquor and country liquor in February last year, even before the posh outlet had a restaurant licence to operate.

All the excise applications were made in the name of Anthony Dgama whose Aadhaar card issued in December 2020 shows him as a resident of Vile Parle, Mumbai.

The lawyer, who spent months digging into the case after a tip-off, also managed to trace Dgama’s death certificate from the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai. He now wonders if such a person was in any way connected to the sprawling 1,200 square metres property in Bhouta Vaddo, Assagao that houses the Silly Souls fine dining restaurant.

In a YouTube segment with food critic Kunal Vijaykar, Zoish Irani said though Goa was a huge tourist hub, it lagged in high-end dining of international calibre and she hoped Silly Souls would become the “food destination” of Goa.

Defying Anti-Incumbency, BJP Set To Retain Power in Goa

The BJP’s win will be particularly sweet for Pramod Sawant, a rookie MLA who took over as chief minister in 2019 after Manohar Parrikar’s death.

Panaji: Beating anti-incumbency sentiments, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set to return to power in Goa for a third consecutive term. The saffron party won 20 of the 40 seats in Goa’s legislative assembly, and is expected to form the government with the help of three independents, and possibly the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), which won two seats.

“Independents are coming with us, MGP will also help us form the government,” the BJP’s Goa in-charge Devendra Fadnavis said in Panaji.

The Congress, which was expected to better its 2017 tally of 17 seats, managed only 11. A huge factor that weighed against the Congress was the presence of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC), both playing out their pan-India political ambitions for a slice of the secular vote in this state. 

AAP took two seats in the once Congress stronghold of Salcette taluka. In Navelim, a Catholic-majority constituency which the former Congress chief minister Luizinho Faleiro (who moved to the TMC for a Rajya Sabha seat) had won seven times, the fierce contest between the Congress, TMC, NCP and AAP allowed the BJP candidate, Ulhas Tuenkar to sneak in with a consolidation of the minority Hindu vote.  

Accepting the verdict of the people, the Congress’ senior leader P. Chidambaram pointed out that the non-BJP voters were hopelessly divided. In some constituencies, Congress candidates lost by thin margins. 

The BJP’s win will be particularly sweet for Pramod Sawant, a rookie MLA who took over as chief minister in 2019 after Manohar Parrikar’s death. Sawant survived a scare earlier in the day when he was trailing in the count but made it through with a margin of just 666 votes over the Congress challenger Dharmesh Sanglani. 

Apart from Sawant, prominent winners from the BJP include Vishvajit Rane and his wife Divya and Babush Monserrate and his wife Jennifer. Luck also seemed to smile on the BJP in this election. The former Congress chief minister Ravi Naik – who moved over to the BJP, scraped through with a margin of just 77 votes in Ponda.

Luck didn’t however favour Manohar Parrikar’s son Utpal, who contested as an independent from his father’s constituency, Panaji. He lost to Babush Monserrate by just 716 votes. Monserrate, the fulcrum of defections from the Congress to the BJP in the last term, was among only three defectors (out of 12) to survive voters’ wrath. The nine others were sent packing.  

Babush Monserrate. Photo: The Wire

Monserrate reacted angrily to his and his wife’s much reduced margins of victories. He lashed out against his own party, saying the result showed the BJP workers haven’t accepted him and his wife into the party. “They worked against both of us. I never accepted this result of such a reduced margin. The BJP did not help us win. We won because of our own workers,” the leader said. Monserrate said this showed a failure on the part of the BJP’s leaders.

With Sawant’s position firmly cemented with the party victory, it is unlikely the BJP will see the need to change the chief minister, despite the rising angst against Sawant even in business circles for his poor leadership qualities and his litany of failures – the mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis, the restarting of mining, the ups and downs of the tourism industry, the damage to the environment from the three linear projects and a host of others. 

Another trend is the consolidation of the Hindu vote, which has given the poor performing BJP and its RSS-bred chief minister yet another term. 

Unlike Parrikar, Sawant made no effort to reach out to Catholic constituencies. All through the campaign, he focused primarily in keeping the AAP and TMC in play, banking on a division of the non-Hindu vote; he constantly parroted the BJP central leadership’s attack on Jawaharlal Nehru; talked of rebuilding temples that had been destroyed by the Portuguese to build churches.

He also trained his guns on Mamata Banerjee, trying to paint her as a supporter of “Muslims and Rohingyas”, primarily to damage the MGP – which had a prepoll alliance with the TMC. The strategy appeared to have worked. The MGP was expected to take at least five seats managed just two, which makes it all the more vulnerable now to being leaned on by big brother BJP.

Hobbled by Voter Anger and Rebellion in Goa, BJP Turns To Familiar Ploy: Targeting Nehru

Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh have repeated PM Narendra Modi’s claim that Jawaharlal Nehru deliberately “delayed” military action to free Goa from Portuguese colonial rule along with India’s Independence.

Panaji: The last phase of the election in Goa has put a shaky Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the defensive, with the ruling party and its phalanx of big faces trying to distract the voter with an orchestrated attack against Jawaharlal Nehru and his role in Goa’s Liberation of December 1961.

Playing up Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s spiel in parliament that Jawaharlal Nehru had deliberately “delayed” military action to free Goa from Portuguese colonial rule along with India’s Independence, Union home minister Amit Shah and defence minister Rajnath Singh – campaigning in Goa on February 9 – sang the same tune.

Had Nehru been a decisive prime minister, Goa would have been liberated in 1947, rather than 1961, Shah said, with Singh echoing the attack.

“In trying to demolish Nehru’s image, the BJP believes it will help them damage the Congress in this election,” says Konkani writer, former editor and lawyer Uday Bhembre.

With voter resentment against the BJP running high, the Congress campaign has moved apace, placing it as the principal challenger in this election, as the high-pitched disruptions of the Aam Aadmi Party and Trinamool Congress fade into the background. 

Bhembre says the BJP’s attack on Nehru’s role in liberating Goa is a “deliberate attempt to distort history” and in keeping with the party’s political strategy to discredit him. 

“Nehru was a perfect democrat, and his decision to hold back on military action has to be seen in the context of the political history of the time,” he says. Caught up in the spiral of problems in running the country post Independence, the Goa case would hardly have figured in the agenda of the new Congress government. “In any case, the decision to annexe Goa was not Nehru’s alone, but the cabinet’s,” says Bhembre.

With his hands tied by India’s commitment to the UN and the non-aligned movement to desist from using force in taking back Goa, the country’s first prime minister spent years exploring every diplomatic option to convince Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar to give up Goa peacefully. The New York Times reported in July 1955 that Nehru had met with Pope Pius XII in Rome and brought up the “Goa question”.

Jawaharlal Nehru. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Quoting from Pundalik Gaitonde’s book The Liberation of Goa: A Participant’s View of History, Bhembre says Nehru sent the Goan surgeon (Gaitonde) who had connections in London on various diplomatic missions abroad “to see that Salazar doesn’t force us to take military action”. Gaitonde, a critic of the colonial regime, had been arrested in Goa in 1954 and deported to Portugal. He was released in 1955, after which he became something of Nehru’s unofficial diplomat-at-large pushing for the cause of peacefully dismantling the colonial rule in Goa.

Calling out the BJP’s falsification of Goa’s resistance struggle is also personal for Bhembre. His father, Laxmikant Bhembre, was arrested by the Portuguese in 1946, sentenced to four years and deported to the notorious political prison in fort Peniche, Portugal (the jail is today the National Museum of Resistance and Freedom). Bhembre’s father spent 16 years in exile in Portugal before he was allowed to return to Goa after the Liberation.

Though the RSS played no role in the resistance to Portuguese rule, as Bhembre points out, in another attempt to reinvent the historical narrative, the BJP under the late Manohar Parrikar, felicitated scores of Sangh members for “participating” in the Goa freedom movement.

“The dynamics and politics of the liberation struggle of Goa had to consider the national and international geo-politics of that period. Today, historiography seems to be influenced by the colour of political ideology. Leaders are either humanised or demonised depending on which side of the political spectrum they belong,” says writer and professor of history Sushila Sawant Mendes.

Also Read: Hidden in Modi’s Attack on Congress Is an Admission of His Govt’s Failures During Pandemic

Rebellions and departures

It isn’t the Congress alone that’s pinching the BJP’s Achille’s heel in this election. The party’s been hit by a series of departures and rebellions that’s likely to overturn any hopes it has of making it anywhere close to the single largest party, leave alone a majority on its own. 

The most prominent face to desert the saffron party is the former union defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s son, Utpal. Snubbed for a ticket by the BJP to contest in Panaji, the seat his father had won six times, Utpal Parrikar is contesting as an independent to take down the BJP’s official nominee, Babush Monserrate. He felt obliged to get into the contest to “fight the criminalisation of politics” in his father’s constituency, Parrikar junior said.

“I’m fighting the biggest battle of my life and putting my career on the line,” he told The Wire, more so because he’s had to “burn bridges with those at the highest level in the country”. The 42-year-old computer engineer was summoned to Delhi by Shah, who tried to get him to change his mind, but to no avail.

Utpal Parrikar’s defiance has been particularly embarrassing to the BJP not just because of the optics and media coverage he’s drawn, but also because it has spurred sympathy for his cause among Manohar Parrikar’s supporters across Goa. “This will cause the party to lose at least 500 votes in each constituency across Goa,” says one of his campaign managers. With a small voter base of roughly 30,000 each, 500 votes are significant in close contests.

Utpal Parrikar. Photo: Narayan Pissurlekar

Parrikar’s son is not the only BJP rebel in the race. The party’s former chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar is also contesting as an independent from Mandrem. Several others have moved to other parties.     

One of the BJP’s biggest losses has been the crossover of its former minister Michael Lobo to the Congress. Lobo, who’s been baiting the saffron party for months, could influence the fortunes of the Congress in at least four seats around his constituency, Calangute, where he’s consolidated his political position over the last 10 years.

For the Congress, its former chief minister Pratapsingh Rane’s decision to pull out of this election – in deference to his son Vishvajit, who’s made himself at home in the BJP – is also a setback.

In 2017, the Congress had emerged the single-largest party with 17+1 (NCP) seats in the 40 member House. The BJP had slumped to 13 seats, down seven from its 2012 tally. But it managed to form the government cobbling a majority with the Goa Forward Party (GFP), the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and independent MLAs. GFP has a pre-poll alliance with the Congress in this election. The MGP has tied up with the TMC.

Goa Elections: With First List, TMC Plays ‘Revenge Politics’, Targets Congress, GFP

Among the 11 names hurriedly declared, TMC’s newly minted Rajya Sabha MP Luizinho Faleiro’s stands out, who is pitched to contest against GFP leader Vijai Sardesai.

Panaji: The Trinamool Congress (TMC), a latecomer to the electoral contest in Goa, released its first list of candidates on January 18. Among the 11 names hurriedly declared, TMC’s newly minted Rajya Sabha MP Luizinho Faleiro’s stands out. One of the candidates made it to the list within an hour of resigning from his local party.

Faleiro is pitched to contest against Goa Forward Party’s (GFP) leader Vijai Sardesai from the Fatorda constituency.

GFP – which won three seats in 2017 – was among the first regional parties to have been approached by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee for a merger or a pre-election tie-up. Both were turned down. Sardesai is now in an alliance with the Congress, which has so far given him three seats.

TMC’s payback strategy: to unsettle Sardesai and pit Faleiro into a contest he has no stomach for – he had told this journalist he would not be standing for local elections after he became MP.

The TMC MP did not respond to calls, neither did the party’s Goa election in-charge Mahua Moitra.

Calling TMC’s move a deliberate ploy to try and bring him down after he spurned their advances, Sardesai told The Wire he refused “to be taken at gunpoint by a Bengali party. Their agenda has been exposed. They are here to only split the non-BJP vote.”

Also read: Ground Report: Goa Wants Change, but Isn’t Sure Who to Vote For

Soon after the announcement of Faleiro’s candidature, the GFP leader received a message from TMC’s poll consultant Prashant Kishor, who has been driving the party’s strategy in Goa.

Kishor had been to Sardesai’s house not once, but thrice, the message said. “You still chose Congress, a party that gave you nothing. You made your choices, we are reacting to it,” he added.

Running an aggressive and expensive poster and media campaign, TMC is learning that deep pockets and paid news alone don’t buy local acceptance, especially in a small state like Goa, which is wary of “outsiders” calling the shots in politics, government and state policy. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) met with similar hostility in 2017 when it contested 39 of 40 seats and drew a blank.

Some promising candidates – most notable among them are former Congress MLA Reginaldo Lourenco, former MGP member Lavoo Mamledar, former independent MLA Prasad Gaonkar – who were proposing to join the TMC or had joined the party, abandoned ship.

Within a month, Lourenco opted out from the party, saying he had faced “a backlash from people” who wanted him to return to the Congress. The appeal didn’t cut much ice with the Congress though, which denied him a ticket. He will now contest as an independent from Curtorim constituency.

TMC’s “lavish and aggressive campaign” and poaching of MLAs has been criticised not only by the Congress which turned down its recent overtures for an alliance, but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too, which lost its long-time ally Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) to a tie-up of convenience with Banerjee’s party.

BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis on January 20, Thursday said Goa has rejected TMC’s “manner of politics”. “The aggression they have shown and the manner in which they have come with suitcases as if Goa’s leaders are for sale in the market cannot inspire confidence in the people.”

Considering past history, the MGP could go any which way if no party gains a majority.

Also read: Goa Polls: To Offset Anti-incumbency, BJP Turns to Hindutva, Polarisation

In an interview to PTI recently, Congress leader P. Chidambaram argued that neither AAP nor TMC had a cadre base in the constituencies. “They have attempted to build their parties through defections from the other parties, notably the Congress.”

With time running out and a strategy designed for disruption, primarily in seats where the Congress has a strong presence, TMC could end up weakening the fight against the BJP far more than AAP, which is trying its hand possibly in all 40 seats, giving the saffron party a shot at recouping from the strong anti-incumbent sentiment in Goa. Most of Goa’s 40 constituencies have a voter base of less than 30,000. A thousand votes taken away can make or break a winning candidate.

In a bitter contest over the secular vote, the last-minute arrival of the Nationalist Congress Party-Shiv Sena combine gives rebels from all corners a chance to dive into the mix.

As Protests Escalate, Ownership of Controversial Bungalow in Old Goa Quietly Changes Hands

The bungalow was owned by spouses of two high-profile politicians.

Panaji: Faced with legal challenges and mounting public hostility, BJP spokesperson Shaina N.C.’s husband Manish Navratn Munot, co-owner of a huge bungalow that has come up within the protected area (under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958) at Old Goa, has quietly pulled out of the project, selling the property to a Mumbai based limited liability partnership (LLP).

Though there were protests even earlier, the construction of the swanky 700 square metre riverside bungalow built on an 11,900 square metre property that fronts the 17th century St Cajetan’s Chapel continued apace.

Speaking from abroad where he is on a business trip, Suraj Lotlikar, the former Goa Forward Party (GFP) treasurer, told The Wire he has sold his share in the project to M/s Corvus Urban Infrastructure LLP. Mumbai builder Munot, who was the co-owner of the property along with Lotlikar’s wife Suvarna Suraj Lotlikar, confirmed he too sold his share to the infrastructure LLP “long back”.

Government documents show both Lotlikar and Munot applied to register the re-sale on August 24 of this year.

The construction of the bungalow within the no-go heritage zone was challenged legally on two occasions, and the case is now before the Supreme Court.

“When the matter went to court a second time, I got fed up and decided to sell my share,” said Lotlikar, who sees himself as “only a small man caught up in an intense media trial” for his involvement in the project with Munot. The latter had previously suggested that the project was receiving undue attention because of his wife’s high-profile designation as a spokesperson for the BJP.

On December 3, Goa’s town and country planning (TCP) minister Chandrakant Kavlekar asked the Old Goa panchayat to take legal action and move to demolish the “illegal structure” in the protected area. In its order, the TCP said technical clearances to the construction were being revoked on grounds that permissions had been “obtained fraudulently and by misrepresentation of fact(s)”.

The final trigger for the government action was the huge public rally in Old Goa on November 21 that saw politicians from across party affiliations line up to pledge support to the Save Old Goa Action Committee, given that state elections are just two months away.

Protesters at the public meet on November 21. Photo: Devika Sequeira

“This is nothing but pure politics,” the former state advocate general Carlos Alvares Ferreira said of the government’s knee jerk reaction, pointing out that a unilateral termination would not stand the scrutiny of law. “Even assuming that the construction is at an advanced stage, if discovered that permissions were obtained through fraud, they can be revoked, the consequence of which could result in demolition.” But the government needs to tread with caution and follow proper procedures, he warned.

Another lawyer who did not wish to be named said he foresaw a long-drawn legal battle. “There will now be an appeal against all the orders.”

Coming out publicly for the first time, Goa’s Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrao also weighed in on the case, telling the government it needed to act against the “obnoxious activities” within the Old Goa heritage zone. The protected area “is not only holy, but a world-renowned heritage”, recognised as such by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and also UNESCO. “Any undue, offensive interventions even by legitimate stakeholders in and around the monuments could attract derecognition of this world heritage status which would be a severe loss to Goa,” he said.

A cluster of seven churches in Old Goa figure in the list of UNESCO world heritage sites. “These seven monuments exerted great influence in the 16th to 18th centuries on the development of architecture, sculpture, and painting by spreading forms of Manueline, Mannerist, and Baroque art and architecture throughout the countries of Asia where Catholic missions were established,” the UN site says.

Munot and Lotlikar acquired the controversial 11,900 sq metre property in May 2015, with Munot buying 9,500 sq metres and Lotlikar’s wife 2,400 sq metres. But the bungalow straddles an area owned by both, according to Lotlikar.

Though the original owners of the land, Jose Maria de Gouveia Pinto, his wife Marie Christine Gouveia Pinto, and his sister Maria Lizette de Abreu Gouveia Pinto sold the land in 2015, all applications for the controversial construction right up to 2019 were made in their names.

“Due to the fact that the property under reference was already sold by you at the time of applying for Technical Clearance, it is quite clear that you could not have obtained the permission in your name and which implies that you have obtained the said permission fraudulently and by misrepresentation of fact, thus attracting the action as stipulated under condition No.2 of the Technical Clearance Order,” the TCP notice to the Gouveia Pintos said.

According to the documents submitted in the apex court, the ASI had pointed out that all that existed on the property was a 54 sq metre hut for storing coconuts. Under protected area laws, the owners could at most apply for repairs to that structure. What’s replacing it currently is a sprawling 700 sq metre bungalow.

Unmoved by the government action, the Save Old Goa Action Committee said its satyagraha would continue till the “physical demolition of the illegal structure”. It also wants the state to notify the demarcation of protected, prohibited and regulated areas on the regional plan.

For the rich and glitzy from Mumbai and Delhi, Old Goa is just another great setting for their next sprawling bungalow. For Goans, it is a site anchored by centuries of history, architecture and the sacred. It is unlikely this fight will be given up easily.

Behind TMC’s Plunge Into Goa’s Electoral Politics, a Media Group Driving the Narrative

As a late entrant into Goa ahead of the 2022 polls, TMC will at best bruise the Congress and the secular vote to the BJP’s advantage.

Panaji: At the press conference to announce his defection to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) at the end of September, Luizinho Faleiro, a former Congress loyalist, admitted he’d had no talks with or met TMC leaders. This was the “first time”, he said, pointing to TMC’s Derek O’Brien and others at the presser. Prashant Kishor of IPAC (Indian Political Action Committee) had negotiated the move. “He’s a wizard at winning elections,” Faleiro had said of the poll strategist.

Behind IPAC’s arrival and the carpet-bombing of Goa’s electoral canvas (the political consultancy firm has 200 employees currently fanned out on the ground to amplify TMC propaganda) was a local media group that acts as a political influencer, and a brush-off from Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

He did indeed meet with Rahul some months ago, Raul Fernandes, the owner and editor-in-chief of O Heraldo (the English daily still uses its original Portuguese masthead) told The Wire. “I asked him if he was interested in the state and in getting some good people into the party. But he didn’t show much interest.”

That’s not how the Congress sees it. Specific demands were made for changes in party appointees, a senior Congress leader told The Wire. “Who is he [Fernandes] to dictate terms to the Congress party? Why doesn’t he focus on running his newspaper rather than acting like a political broker?”

In the interest of “doing good for Goa”, Fernandes, after exploring a deal with AAP, turned to Kishor. Heady from Mamata Banerjee’s celebrated victory in West Bengal, Kishor snapped up the opening for a foothold on the west coast to amplify the play for Banerjee as the opposition face to take on Modi in 2024.

Luizinho Faleiro with Mamata Banerjee. Photo: Special arrangement

On the day Faleiro moved to the TMC, O Heraldo ran the headline “Goa gets set for a new dawn”. IPAC used the same headline in its press note that day.

On Thursday, the paper’s front page sang “Didi’s Goa chorus grows louder”, even as it scathingly criticised the Congress for defections in its editorialised “analysis”  that appears daily in a highlight.

Since the 2012 election and BJP leader Manohar Parrikar’s successful “management” of the local press – some of which like O Heraldo (the paper claims the largest circulation in the state) ran a frenzied anti-Congress campaign targeting political corruption – Goa’s media has lent itself to paid news and political pamphleteering. So much so, that a large swathe of readers is unable to discern the “alternative facts” from the reality, especially during elections, political analysts point out.

In the run-up to 2022 (Goa’s legislative assembly elections are due in three months), O Heraldo has gone a step further, lobbying on behalf of parties to poach known political faces and strong candidates. After the Rahul Gandhi snub, media lobbyists set about finding a chief ministerial face for AAP. Arvind Kejriwal’s party had contested the 2017 election as well, but drew a blank, losing its deposit in all but one seat.

Also read: ‘Coal Theft’, Interpol, ‘Vendetta’: The Story Behind ED Summons to Mamata Banerjee’s Nephew, Wife

Since TMC’s arrival, the Herald group had been directly in touch with Congress members, urging them to cross over to the West Bengal party. O Heraldo’s consulting editor Sujoy Gupta has been “talking to some people”, Fernandes admitted, but these were mostly “artists and sports people” and not politically involved, he claimed. Over the years, Gupta’s journalism has lurched from pro-mining to anti-mining, from pro-BJP to anti-BJP or anti-Congress depending on which media house uses him.

Big face, limited reach

As far as optics went, Faleiro’s exit dealt a body blow to the Congress, causing a media splash TMC and Kishor celebrated. Till recently the chairman of the Congress’s Goa election co-ordination committee and the AICC’s in charge of north-eastern states in 2007, Faleiro’s loyalty to the Gandhis had catapulted him to the chief ministerial chair twice. Yet unlike Parrikar, his reach within Goa remained limited to his South Goa constituency of Navelim, where he was elected seven times.

Even here, his political stock was on the slide, says lawyer and columnist Cleofato Coutinho. “He was facing strong anti-incumbency in the constituency. There were complaints he’d become inaccessible to voters.” The Congress’s ground survey said as much, the party’s desk-in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao told journalists, calling Faleiro’s TMC move his “retirement plan”.

Like Sushmita Deb who defected from the Congress to TMC and was rewarded with a Rajya Sabha seat by Banerjee, Faleiro has likely angled for one. His chances of venturing into the electoral contest as the TMC’s Goa face are dim at best.

So far, the Congress has managed to stave off more blood-letting, winning back its popular MLA, Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco, who was set for a switch to AAP. That chapter is now closed, Lourenco said, after a rushed meeting with Rahul.

Luizinho Faleiro and supporters after moving to the TMC. Photo: Special arrangement

In Goa, both AAP’s and TMC’s pan-India expansionist ambitions can only come at the expense of the Congress and a disruption of the secular vote. Neither can claim even a nibbling presence in BJP-held constituencies, which led Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant to gleefully say he more than welcomed the current “political tourism” that has washed up in Goa.

In 2017, the Congress had emerged as the single-largest party with 17 seats (in a house of 40) and 28.4% of the vote. The BJP with 32.5% of the vote had slumped to 13 seats, yet managed to hijack the mandate and grab power. Over the term, the saffron party consolidated power with more defections and imports from both the Congress and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party.

Also read: Mamata Banerjee’s Bold But Risky Strategy to Position Herself as the Natural Choice to Take on Narendra Modi in 2024

On the downturn for its in-your-face corruption over crumbling infrastructure, poor handling of COVID-19 and oxygen shortage deaths, its attempts to ram down three environmentally damaging linear projects through protected forests, its inability to restart mining, and the ruthless filching of MLAs, the BJP would need more than money muscle and a well-oiled election machine to return to power on its own in Goa. It has recently made overtures to its one-time ally, MGP, the very party it reduced to one MLA with its steals. Talks are currently on and will no doubt get a boost with Amit Shah currently on a two-day visit to Goa.

Much will depend too on how Congress plays its cards here on. The party has shut its doors to defectors but kept a studied silence on alliances, leaving both the Nationalist Congress Party and Goa Forward Party guessing.

Devika Sequeira is an independent journalist based in Goa.

BJP’s Shaina N.C., Spouse, Set To Pull Out of Controversial Project at Old Goa

In the real estate frenzy that has gripped Goa currently, even protected sites have become vulnerable to land sharks.

Caught in a storm of local protests and legal challenges over a construction within the protected world heritage zone at Old Goa with its cluster of centuries-old churches, Mumbai’s power couple Shaina N.C., the BJP’s Maharashtra spokesperson, and her husband, developer Manish Munot have decided to pull out of the project.

BJP’s Maharashtra spokesperson Shaina N.C.. Photo: Bollywood Hungama/CC BY 3.0/Wikimedia Commons

Insisting that they were being targeted with an ulterior motive because his wife is “famous”, Munot told The Wire he was withdrawing from the project because he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s sentiments. “I am on the verge of selling my property; in fact I have basically sold it,” he said.

The property was no longer of any use to him, the builder said. “I had every intention of building there. Had I been given permission I would not let go of my rights. I go by the law in everything.”

The question is why would an experienced developer like Munot buy a property in a protected area (under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958)?

Calling it “a case of gross misuse of power by the state government to favour a powerful and influential party,” a special leave petition (SLP) filed in the Supreme Court by the Save Old Goa Action Committee has challenged the ongoing construction of the river-front ground plus one bungalow coming up within the protected zone and a stone’s throw away from the Chapel of St. Cajetan, the Viceroy’s Arch and Largo of St. Cajetan.

The controversy has also stung the Goa Forward Party (GFP). It recently eased out its treasurer Suraj Lotlikar after the Old Goa case sparked objections from the church and created a political uproar. “He is no longer with us,” GFP spokesperson Durgadas Kamat told The Wire. Just months away from an election early next year, the local party was obviously keen to distance itself from the political blowback from the case.

Also read: Goa Hopes To Revive Mines – But Affected Communities Fear Return of Old Normal

Munot and Lotlikar’s wife, Suvarna Suraj Lotlikar, are co-owners of the property in question which they acquired in two separate sale deeds executed on the same day in May 2015.

Goa’s real estate market has spiked to new highs post the second phase of the coronavirus pandemic with scores of young professionals and the urban rich from the rest of India scouring for their Goa dream house to work from home in more conducive surroundings. The resurgent boom has also spawned a subterranean tribe of “brokers” with connections within a highly compromised administration willing to provide, or at least promise, a fix even for cases governed by the most stringent laws.

“The illegal construction coming up within the protected area of Old Goa is a classic case of how powerful and influential people can pressurise, bribe, threaten and manipulate the bureaucracy and system to get permissions, where it is absolutely not possible to get permissions,” Fr Noel D’Costa, a priest with the Goa Archdiocese said.

Fr D’Costa praised the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Goa Circle, for standing up to the pressure to withdraw its objections to the project. The ASI’s investigation of the documents brought to light the extent of the fraud and misrepresentation in the case, he said.

The high court, however, set aside the ASI’s orders to stop work.

A photo of the ongoing construction in a protected area. Photo: author provided

According to the documents presented in the apex court which has admitted the petition, though the original owners of the property, Jose Maria de Gouveia Pinto, his wife and sister sold the land to Munot and Lotlikar in 2015, applications for “reconstruction of an ancestral house” (which never existed there in the first place, says the ASI) and a green signal from the director general ASI was sought as late as January 2020 in the name of the Gouveia Pintos. Under the law, only repairs to an existing structure are allowed in a protected zone. And all that stood on the property, the Goa ASI reported, was but a small, dilapidated hut used usually to store coconuts. Currently, the construction of a 397 square metre one-storied structure is underway.

To back the claim that a “19th century ancestral house” had indeed existed on the property but had somehow been blown away “in a cyclone that hit Goa in 1992”, Suvarna Lotlikar (co-owner of the property) appended photographs of a house, only to have her bluff called by the ASI. Some excellent sleuthing by the government agency showed that the house did actually exist. Except that it was still standing and was located some 30 km away from the site in a village called Barcem, in Pernem, North Goa.

Architect Tulio D’Souza who has worked on projects to restore heritage structures said he feared that “any attempt to put up new constructions within notified protected zones clearly in breach of law will be the beginning of many such permissions and structures that may come up in the future destroying the sanctity of a world heritage site”. Even worse, the government of Goa through its agencies has been a party to ruining a heritage site revered by pilgrims the world over.

In the real estate frenzy that has gripped Goa, it’s easy to see why the rich and famous would be drawn to a site such as the one acquired by Shaina and Munot. With an unobstructed view of the River Mandovi, a scenic ferry point to Divar Island at hand and a drive through the Viceroy’s Arch built in the memory of Vasco Da Gama in 1597 — all of it framed in the brooding backdrop of the 16th century churches —What’s not to like in the furious competition to own a Goan Portuguese house?

Devika Sequeira is an independent journalist based in Goa.

Goa: 47 COVID Patients Dead in 48 Hours Due to Oxygen Shortfall at Medical College

When 26 patients died on Tuesday, chief minister Pramod Sawant said oxygen was abundantly available and the problem of supply would be fixed within a day. On Wednesday, 21 more patients succumbed.

Panaji: Forty-seven COVID-19 patients have died in the government-run Goa Medical College (GMC) due to “interrupted oxygen supply” in the past 48 hours, in what can only be described as criminal negligence on the part of the BJP government in Goa and the bureaucrats assigned to monitor the crisis.

Twenty-six lives were lost because of the oxygen shortfall in the early hours of Tuesday, May 11. Another 21 have died on Wednesday from inadequate oxygen supply, highly placed government sources told The Wire.

An internal note from the hospital to the government, accessed by The Wire, put the sobering picture in focus with this scathing assessment: “Causes of deaths at GMC—interrupted oxygen supply.” The hospital requires 1,200 cylinders a day, but had received only 400 on May 10, it said.

Also Read: With Goa Toll, Hospital Oxygen Shortage Has Taken Lives of at Least 223 COVID Patients in India

The hospital also noted the scores of calls it had made to both the oxygen supplier and the Chief Minister’s Office when oxygen levels began to drop in the early hours between 2 am and 6 am on Tuesday. This was when most of the oxygen-related deaths occurred.

Goa’s unending spiral of COVID-19 misery – 3,124 new cases and 75 deaths (the highest so far) were reported on Tuesday – is clearly being exacerbated by both a failure in leadership and bureaucratic complacency.

Power tussle between Sawant and Rane

The power tussle between chief minister Pramod Sawant and health minister Vishwajit Rane – currently at its fiercest in the worst stage of the pandemic – has only made matters worse, showing the government has neither a plan nor the leadership to bring the situation under control.

On April 21, Sawant appointed a three-member team of nodal officers to oversee the “management of COVID-19 in government hospitals”. This was apparently to counter Rane’s influence over the medical officials in the frontline. Drawn from a group of IAS officers, none with experience of local ground realities, the nodal group was put in charge of management of beds and drugs, oxygen supply and helpline in the government hospitals.

This reporter asked Swetika Sanchan, the officer in charge of “allocation and management of oxygen supply”, why she did not respond when social media was filled with distress messages and the Goa Association of Resident Doctors had long since red-flagged the oxygen crisis.

Sanchan said she hadn’t been to work for three days because she was self-isolating. “My daughter has tested positive, and her life matters to me,” she said.

What about the lives of those who died of oxygen shortage at GMC?

“This is an unprecedented situation,” Sanchan pleaded, highlighting the point that she is the junior-most officer in the government and her senior Kunal Jha, would be better placed to field questions. Jha did not respond to several calls and messages from The Wire, neither did health secretary Ravi Dhavan.

This might seem like petty quibbling in the current scenario, but it points to the level of indifference that has crept into a government run by a wishy-washy chief minister.

“The chief minister is now at the forefront of the COVID-19 fight. For the past two weeks, he’s been monitoring everything himself,” Sawant’s PRO Gauresh Kalangutkar said. As if to affirm this, shadowed by a photographer, Sawant turned up at GMC on Tuesday morning after the deaths due to oxygen shortage. “I’m probably the first chief minister in the country to visit a COVID-19 ward,” he boasted in a hospital where 48 people (including the 26 who died gasping for oxygen) had died hours before his visit.

“We have 100% oxygen. The problem is getting cylinders to the patients on time,” the Goa CM said, assuring worried relatives that “the problem will be resolved in a day” after his meeting with heads of departments on Tuesday.

21 more deaths on Wednesday

Twenty-one more people have died on Wednesday from oxygen disruptions since the chief minister’s public assurance.

“There should be a high court monitored inquiry to find out why so many are dying in GMC from interrupted supply of oxygen,” said Rane, who’s been completely sidelined by Sawant and his coterie, on Tuesday. The high court of Bombay at Goa is currently hearing a clutch of public interest petitions on the government’s mishandling of the pandemic.

Not Sawant alone, but Rane as well must bear the culpability for so many oxygen-related deaths in Goa, a leading physician said. “To allow the system to lapse to this level is not just criminal negligence, but downright criminal. Who’ll be held responsible for these deaths that could have been so easily prevented?” the physician asked.

A reporter who has been at ground zero, tracking every angle of the unfolding medical crisis over several weeks, said she felt enraged that politicians in Goa were using the tragedy to score points and that the bureaucracy had behaved so callously. Like this was just another day at the office. “They’ve all got blood on their hands,” she said.

Devika Sequeira is an independent journalist based in Goa.

How Pramod Sawant’s Failure Led to Goa Becoming the State With the Highest Positivity Rate

Even as locals died, the parties went on in the beach belt, the casinos rolled on and the municipal elections became a priority.

Panaji: Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s response to an order of the high court on Thursday, May 6, demonstrates how he still does not get the enormity of the COVID-19 crisis that has brought the smallest state in the country to its knees by his government’s mishandling. 

Pulling up the state for its failure to impose even “minimum restrictions” to contain the epidemic when the test positivity rate has spiralled to 52% (the highest in the country), the high court of Bombay at Goa said travel to Goa would require a COVID-19 negative certificate from May 10. The order was “impractical to implement,” Sawant said, though Maharashtra next door imposed such restrictions on entry from Goa weeks ago.


Nearly 4,000 new COVID-19 infections were recorded in Goa on Thursday, the highest single-day count. The last 48 hours have claimed 129 lives. Goa has lost 1,502 persons to COVID-19 so far and total infections have scaled past 108,267. A staggering number for a population of 1.5 million where the virus has run through one in 15 people already since the start of the pandemic.

How did we get here?

A fortnight ago, the Goa CM was on the BJP’s pet channel adding weight to Republic TV’s “stay strong India” campaign. No way would he be shutting down this tourist destination to business, he said, bragging that he could both run the economy and keep the pandemic in check. Even after dozens of their staff members tested positive, casinos were allowed to roll on (with the hotels, they were ordered to shut only on April 29), the beach belt buzzed with late night parties and the state’s borders remained open to all red zone states. As the country’s cases soared, Goa’s beaches ran packed with mask-less Indian tourists letting their hair down, chilled beer in hand, basking in sun and sand. 

Taking a cue from Sawant’s open house policy, some high-end hotels peddled “lockdown” packages eager to cash in on those wanting a quick escape from their locked in existence in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, without a thought to the outcome of a virus that travels so insidiously and so freely.


“Is Goa on a suicide mission?” a leading physician who put out an appeal cautioning for better sense to prevail, asked.

“If you make SOPs (standard operating procedures) stricter and you harass tourists, which tourist will come to Goa? We have to take precautionary measures, but at the same time, you cannot stop business because COVID-19 cases are increasing.” This was the BJP’s ports minister Michael Lobo’s sentiment last month.

No surprises there. Lobo’s Calangute constituency is powered by the engines of tourism. The minister owns a half dozen resorts and restaurants himself. By late April, Calangute was beginning to suffer the consequences of the heavy influx of mask-free tourists during a pandemic. Goa’s famous watering holes on the North Goa coast, Calangute, Baga, Candolim turned into hotspots of COVID-19 infections. 

In defiance of the CM’s SOPs, Lobo has now been compelled to impose a strict lockdown in all the panchayats in his constituency “to break the chain of infections”.  Dozens of other panchayats across Goa, including the ones in the chief minister’s constituency, Sanquelim, have followed suit, leaving Sawant to feebly protest that the “self-lockdowns” were likely to create panic. 

“Bhivpachi garaz na” – ‘no need to worry’ – a Konkani phrase the Goa chief minister has often thrown about through the scale up of the pandemic best defines his inability to grasp the scale of the crisis and the gravity of the situation. To put it bluntly, he lacks not just competence and intelligence but sensitivity too.

Gloating over the BJP’s performance in recent elections to civic bodies – which turned out to be super-spreaders of the virus –Sawant basked in self-congratulatory advertisements that ran to full pages in the local dailies on his birthday (April 24) even as the virus devastated the state and overloaded its stretched healthcare system.

Also read: COVID-19 Deaths in India Are Rising the Fastest In the World: Data

“We’re seeing three times the number of cremations we would normally handle in a month,” an official told The Wire. This grim figure underscored the incongruity of the double spread advertisement in The Navhind Times calling Sawant “an exemplary leader with uncommon wisdom and remarkable vision”.

Those two pages alone ran 11 photographs of the chief minister, some in four column size.

“The buck stops at the CM’s door. People are dying because of his mismanagement of the crisis. Sawant should show some self-respect and resign,” Goa Forward Party (GFP) leader Vijai Sardessai said. A GFP member is party to the slew of public interest petitions that resulted in the HC’s Thursday order. A pressure group close to Sawant attempted to pin the blame on health minister Vishvajit Rane instead.

Seen as an “outsider” within the saffron party, Vishvajit, the son of the former Congress chief minister Pratapsingh Rane flipped to the BJP in Manohar Parrikar’s time. “Rane at least understands what needs to be done, though he too could have done more after the warning that a second wave was likely to hit us,” a medical official said. 

The fact that civil society groups, lawyers and concerned citizens had to move courts to get the Goa government to act “in the public interest” during a crisis of this dimension ultimately shows the level of inadequacy and inertia in the state’s BJP leadership.