Click to play videoPanjim (Goa): Atanasio Monsarrate, popularly known as Babush and Churchill Alemao are some of the controversial names to figure in Goa's latest toppling game. It is Babush and Alemao who have combined with former BJP chief minister, Manohar Parikkar to dislodge the Congress-led Digambar Kamat regime.
On the eve of Goa polls, CNN-IBN had carried out an investigation showing how Babush was involved in a series of dubious land deals and was even intent on selling Goa's lucrative plots to the Russian mafia. It was Babush who had helped draw up the Goa Regional Plan and had to go out of office under public pressure.
Now the Congress says that the land sharks have got together to prop up Parikkar and sell off Goa's environmental heritage.
“Are they targeting me because I have scrapped all dubious land deals?” says Digambar Kamat.
However, Parikkar says that these allegations are a way of postponing what matters most in democracy - the headcount in the Assembly.
But it is interesting that Allemao who floated the Save Goa Front to campaign against Babush is now back in his political company. Babush had all along been insisting that he was the victim of a smear campaign.
“During elections, all kinds of things are said,” says Babush.
Allemao, however, is more candid. “In politics, all kind of things happen,” he says.
Legend has it that Goa was found when sage Parashuram carved land out of receding seas. Today Goa's politicians are redrawing the landscape and in the process destroying the political topography as well.
(With inputs from Pallavi Ghosh in New Delhi)
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