Panjim: Electoral bonds purchased and encashed in the months leading upto and just before the Goa assembly election on February 28, 2022, reveal an interesting story.
In February and March of 2022, state assembly elections were held in Goa, along with four other states, Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
An analysis of electoral bond data released by the State Bank of India and uploaded by the Election Commission of India after the Supreme Court order, shows that the Bharatiya Janata Party BJP received bonds of the combined value of Rs 741.86 crore in July and October 2021 and January 2022. The All India Trinamool Congress or TMC received electoral bonds of the combined value of Rs 444.37 crore in July and October 2021 and January 2022.
In those same months, the Congress received electoral bonds to the combined value of Rs 187.88 crore, the Shiv Sena Rs 29 crore, the Nationalist Congress Party Rs 10.20 crore, the Aam Aadmi Party Rs 3.65 crore, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party or MGP Rs 55 lakhs, and the Goa Forward Party, Rs 35 lakhs.
Polling on 40 seats of the Goa assembly elections were held in February 2022. It was marked by multi-cornered contests and a splintering of the opposition. It also witnessed the presence of regional parties from outside the state entering the poll fray. Notable among these was the TMC, which contested 29 seats in a tie-up with the regional MGP.
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Fresh from a victory in West Bengal in April 2021, Mamata Banerjee’s TMC stormed the Goa poll scene in 2022, on the back of the Prashant Kishor run Indian Political Action Committee. I-PAC ran a corporate-style campaign, spending high on advertising and with a strong influencer component in a state where the TMC had an insignificant prior footprint. The costly blitz failed and eventually drew a blank at the hustings. But it created a major stir in the pre-election landscape, garnering the support of major non-governmental organisations operating in the state and a local English daily. The TMC drew political blood from the Congress, when its former Pradesh Congress chief and also former chief minister, Luizinho Faleiro resigned from his assembly seat to join the TMC in September 2021. He was later allotted a Rajya Sabha seat.
The BJP returned to power for a third term, picking up 20 seats. The Congress won 11, the AAP and MGP won two each, the Goa Forward Party and Revolutionary Goans Party won one each and independents won three. The TMC drew a blank but garnered 5.21% of the vote share.
One of the major issues underpinning that election is the turf war and resource tussle over Goa’s iron ore mining sector.
Charges of illegal mining saw the Goa sector face a court ban since 2012. Restarting in 2014, with a court mandated annual cap of 20 million tonnes, the locally operated sector took a further hit, on another count, in 2018. Lease renewals granted by the state government to regional Goa based export oriented mining companies were cancelled by the court, for improper procedure. A review petition failed, and the state BJP government set up the Goa Mineral Development Corporation in 2021, months before the state went to polls. Loss of mining revenue and GDP contribution, crippled Goa’s financial and federal independence.
The BJP government returned to government in March 2022. The GMDC remains non functional, as the new government, acceded to central policies and pressed on with opening up the sector via the auction route. In September 2022, the state government held the first phase of auctions. The second phase was held in January 2023 – together, a total of nine mining blocks have been auctioned.
The nine blocks constitute 17 of the erstwhile 88 leases that were in operation by Goa mine owners, prior to the lease cancellations and shutdown.
Auctioning of Goa’s mines – that once accounted for 40 % of India’s ore exports – generated interest from out-of-state iron ore operators and steel manufacturers in the sector, including majors mining in the iron ore belts of Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, and steel majors like the Jindal-owned JSW Steel, operating in Karnataka.
For Karnataka, Goa is already a vital site – thanks to the Mormugao Port – for its connectivity to road and rail routes to the steel mills in the state. With the pause on ore exports, the port moved to coal imports as steel majors indicated interest in leveraging Goa’s locational advantage in being situated between the ore mines and ports in Maharashtra and the steel plants in Karnataka.
Also read: Aditya Birla Group, Rashmi, and Jindal Steel Power Top Poll Bond Donors of Biju Janta Dal
Eighty six tenders were purchased and 51 firms made initial price offers for the two NITs or Notice Inviting Tenders.
Successful bidders for the blocks were Vedanta Limited (two blocks), Fomento Resources Private Limited (two), Rajaram Bandekar Mines (one), and Salgaocar Shipping Company Private Ltd (one). Odisha-based Kai International Private Limited (one) and JSW Steel Limited (two), were the new entrants in the Goa mining landscape, marking a major shift.
Interestingly, purchasers of electoral bonds in the run up to the February 2022 Goa election include a number of mining, coal and steel majors and their distributors.
Among the Goa-based companies, not all mining firms, that purchased bonds in July or October 2021 and January 2022, were Vedanta Limited at a significant Rs 97 crores. Other companies like Hardesh Ores Private Limited (Rs 6 crore), Infrastructure Logistics Private Limited (Rs 4 crore), and so on, bought smaller amounts which led to a total of Rs 117.51 crores.
The BJP received 78% of these bond funds, while the Congress received 20%.
