THE GOAN NETWORK
PANAJI
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday came down heavily on the Dhavalikar brothers for appealing to MGP supporters to vote for Congress.
Calling Sudin Dhavalikar without a ministry as a “fish out of water”, North Goa candidate and State Secretary Pradeep Padgaonkar said the former minister was addicted to certain “lucrative” portfolios having held them for so long, under both BJP and Congress governments.
He further stated that the Dhavalikar brothers were only interested in taking advantage of the traditional voters of the MGP in their pursuit of power.
Panaji candidate for the AAP Valmiki Naik invoked the memory of Babasaheb Ambedkar, and after enumerating the various achievements of the AAP govenrment in Delhi, asserted that both Bhausaheb Bandodkar and Arvind Kejriwal were similarly guided by Ambedkar’s principles of making education, social and political power accessible to the common man.
AAP also appealed to traditional voters of MGP to dismiss the selfish appeal of the Dhavalikars to vote for Congress, stating this was only being done again for their personal gain.
They also cautioned not to vote for BJP either, whose casteist hegemony had destroyed the legacy of Bhausaheb and undone all his work done to establish schools, health centres, and the Tenancy Act. Only the AAP was capable of upholding the vision of Bandodkar and Ambedkar, they said, while appealing to MGP supporters to cast their vote for AAP.
Naik also drew a comparison between Germany in 1930 and India today, saying that a dictator had been born in India.
"If the Modi-Shah duo are re-elected for another term, will we have elections in the future or not?" questioned Naik.
"The AAP had initially come to drive out corruption. We were against the Congress. But today, we are still okay with a pre-poll alliance with the same party we were against because our democracy and secular structure is at stake," he said.
