With 8 of 11 of its legislators willing to hop on to the BJP bandwagon, the Congress Legislature Party in Goa may split vertically in days to come. Sources said that out of 11 Congress MLAs, 8 may join the BJP. They are waiting for an invite from the BJP leadership to join the Saffron party.
While Congress put up a brave face and remained in denial all through the day, it sacked Michael Lobo as the Leader of Opposition. In a press conference Congress said that a “conspiracy” was hatched by some of its leaders along with the BJP to weaken it and engineer defections.
“A conspiracy was hatched by some of our own leaders with the BJP to see that the Congress party in Goa is weakened and to engineer defections. This conspiracy was led by 2 of our own leaders LoP Michael Lobo and Digambar Kamat,” Congress Goa in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao said
Amid this, Speaker of the Goa Legislative Assembly Ramesh Tawadkar on Sunday morning cancelled the notification announcing elections for the post of Deputy Speaker. The election was scheduled to be held on July 12 during the upcoming monsoon Assembly session. The two-week-long Assembly session will begin on Monday.
The buzz began to do the rounds that the BJP high command at the centre was in touch with Congress MLAs after a rift between former Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamath and Leader of Opposition in the legislature Michael Lobo came to the fore.
If the BJP succeeds in engineering the split, the Congress Party may be almost completely decimated like it did after the party had secured a majority in 2017 elections. But the party failed to keep its flock of legislators together. In July 2019, the Congress Legislative Party leader Chandrakant Kavlekar had defected to the BJP taking nine Congress legislators along with him. Before him, two Congress MLAs had already switched their loyalty to Saffron party.
The Congress Party had in an attempt to keep its flock together even administered an oath of allegiance to its leaders before 2022 elections. This oath was administered in the presence of Goa supervisor P. Chindambaram.
In the Assembly elections held in February this year, Congress had managed to win 11 seats only against 17 seats the party won in 2017 elections. The BJP won 20 seats, emerging as the single largest party in the 40-member state Assembly.
Earlier, reacting to the turn of events of a possible split in his party, AICC Goa in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao said, “Yesterday we had a Congress Legislative Party meeting in Goa. All the MLAs of the Congress party are intact but BJP is trying to poach our MLAs and intimidate them. But all the MLAs are intact.” Goa Pradesh Congress Committee President Amit Patkar refuted any possibility of a split, while trashing the rumours as being spread by the ruling party. He told the media, “These are all rumours. There is nothing as such. Assembly (session) is starting and one rumour has to be spread by somebody or the other. I have not been told, if I am told I’ll tell you first.” His party colleague Lobo also said that the claims to be false.
Meanwhile, Congress MLAs reportedly held a series of meetings in the Margao town on Sunday. Sources said that the rebel MLAs have already expressed their desire to vote for the BJP-led NDA’s presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu.