CONGRESS CHHODO, BJP JODO AGAIN
HEAVYWEIGHTS DIGAMBAR, LOBO, ALEIXO AMONG 8 TO QUIT CONGRESS SAFFRON PARTY’S TALLY ALONE IS NOW 28 CONGRESS REDUCED TO THREE
In yet another political low for Goa, the seed of defection sown back in July, finally sprouted on its political turf on Wednesday. Eight of the eleven Congress MLAs, led by the Leader of the Opposition, Michael Lobo, jumped the aisle and joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Apart from Lobo and his wife Delilah, the group of eight includes former chief minister Digambar Kamat, Aleixo Sequeira, Sankalp Amonkar, Rudolf Fernandes, Kedar Naik and Rajesh Faldessai.
The group set the ball of defection rolling early Wednesday morning when they first met at the chamber of the Opposition Leader in the Goa legislative assembly complex. They called it a ‘Congress Legislature Party’ meeting where they said they passed a resolution to split the party and merge with the BJP.
The scene then shifted to the chamber of Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and eventually to the BJP State headquarters in Panaji where the eight MLAs were formally inducted into the party with each of them being handed over their membership certificate.
Wednesday’s development has depleted the Congress’
numbers in the 40-member House to just three -- Carlos Ferreira Alvares, Yuri Alemao and Altone D’Costa.
The Sawant-led BJP on the other hand has buttressed its numerical strength to 28 and consequently the strength of the treasury benches has gone up to 33.
Five more legislators in the
ruling coalition are accounted for by Power Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar and Jit Arolkar of the MGP, besides three Independents in Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco, Dr Chandrakant Shetye and Anton Vas.
On the other side of the aisle, the strength of the Opposition benches is now seven.
In addition to the three Congress MLAs, the Opposition benches has two Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs -Venzy Viegas and Cruz Silva -- and one MLA apiece of the Goa Forward Party (GFP) and the Revolutionary Goans Party (RGP) in Vijai Sardesai and Viresh Borkar respectively.
This is the third time in recent history that the Congress has faced a defection of its MLAs which has been led by its Opposition Leader.
The last time it happened was in July 2019 when former Deputy Chief Minister Chandrakant (Babu) Kavlekar led a 10-member group to the other side. Prior to that, current Agriculture Minister Ravi Naik had switched sides along with three others back in the year 2000, when he occupied the Opposition Leader’s post.
The current wave of defections meanwhile had been on the political agenda of the State since July 12, when the Congress had claimed that five of its MLAs had gone incognito.
The developments then had led the party removing Lobo as Opposition Leader and launching disqualification proceedings against him and Kamat. However, the principal Opposition party remained indecisive on the question of naming the new CLP leader, thus letting Lobo to technically continue in that position up until Wednesday’s defection.
With the figure of defectors touching eight, it accounts for the provision of the antidefection law (Xth Schedule of the Constitution) which stipulates that at least 2/3rd of the strength of a party’s legislators is a must for a merger with another political party.
Nonetheless, the Congress meanwhile has said it will challenge in a court of law the validity of Wednesday’s developments claimed to be a ‘merger’ by its eight former MLAs.