SCRUTINY : ST RESERVATION or POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE?

Goa’s long-awaited Scheduled Tribe political reservation is finally moving towards implementation — and it could dramatically reshape the 2027 Assembly election. The four constituencies expected to be reserved are Quepem, Sanguem, Priol and Nuvem. That immediately puts the political future of several sitting MLAs into question. Altone D’Costa will have to leave Quepem and could look towards Velim or Navelim. But Velim already has Congress’s Savio D’Silva, who lost the 2022 election by just 169 votes. In Sanguem, Cabinet Minister Subhash Phal Dessai will have to search for another constituency. Curchorem is one possibility, but sitting BJP MLA Nilesh Cabral and emerging claimant Rohan Desai are already there. Govind Gaude is the only sitting MLA among the four who can remain in Priol because he belongs to the ST community. In Nuvem, Aleixo Sequeira will have to make way for an ST candidate, with Anthony Barbosa among the names that could enter the BJP calculation. Ramesh Tawadkar and Ganesh Gaonkar could also become crucial pieces in the BJP’s larger ST-seat strategy. But this political earthquake is only one part of the story. The struggle goes back to ST recognition for Goa’s Gawda, Kunbi and Velip communities in 2003. The Goa Assembly first backed ST political reservation in 2007. The historic Balli agitation of May 25, 2011 saw Mangesh Gaonkar and Dilip Velip lose their lives. Vijai Sardesai later wrote to then Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju demanding action on the long-pending reservation. The Goa Assembly again unanimously backed the demand in July 2023. Parliament subsequently passed the special Goa ST representation law. On August 6, 2026, the Centre finally brought the Act into force, opening the way for reserved seats in the next election. But Balli was never only about political representation — jobs, backlog vacancies, forest rights, land protection and tribal welfare were also central demands. This SCRUTINY examines whether four reserved Assembly seats complete Goa’s tribal struggle — or whether the larger battle for rights and implementation still remains.