Juggling veterans to delivering on mining, Sawant faces key test

For Pramod Sawant, who was on Monday picked to be the Goa chief minister, a host of challenges lie ahead as he prepares to begin work in his second straight term, according to political experts.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which won 20 seats in the 40-member assembly, on Monday submitted letters of support from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, Goa’s oldest regional party, and three Independents MLAs to Governor PS Sreedharan Pillai, who invited Sawant to form the next government.

At 49, three-time MLA Sawant will have to handle several veterans in his government including former chief minister Ravi Naik, MGP leader Sudin Dhavalikar and Atanasio “Babush” Monserrate.

“His first challenge will be to keep everyone within the government happy, especially since there are many former ministers who will be expecting to be retained while others will be eying plum positions. Should he fail to do so, he will not have a strong hand as chief minister,” Kishor Naik Gaonkar, an editor for a local newspaper and a political analyst, said.

A lack of coordination could be seen during the two-and-a-half-year tenure of Sawant between him and state health minister Vishwajit Rane in the handling of the Covid-19 battle, people aware of the matter said. Simmering tensions between Sawant and Rane are expected to continue going forward, despite a truce being brokered by the party high command, they said.

Sawant is also under pressure to deliver on resuming Goa’s mining industry that has now entered the fourth year since it was shut down once in 2018. “The BJP’s inability to resume mining was the prime reason why Sawant saw his margin reduced and was elected by only a wafer-thin majority,” Gaonkar said.

“In his second term, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant will need to continue to look over his shoulder for any future challenges to his leadership from Vishwajit Rane. One of his first tasks will be to restart the economically crucial mining sector, virtually at a standstill since 2018 that can both help improve state finances as well as tackle the state’s rising unemployment problem. Resumption of mining and jobs were key issues in the run up to the polls,” Mayabhushan Nagvenkar a journalist and commentator who authored a book on Manohar Parrikar, said.

For his part, in his first comments after formally being announced as the chief minister, Sawant said his priority was to take forward the “Swayampurna (self-sufficient) Goa” programme that has been modelled on the “Atmanirbhar Bharat” programme of the Union government.

“The priority will be to take forward the Swayampurna Goa programme with renewed vigour as well as to take the central government schemes to every nook and corner of Goa,” Sawant said.