Goa, it would seem, is the right place for the beleaguered and decimated Congress to relaunch itself. With the State’s Manohar Parrikar led BJP coalition Government — arguably the most nationally popular BJP ruled State after Modi's Gujarat — consistently making national headlines for wrong reasons, one would expect the Opposition Congress to go all guns blazing.

But it is not to be, a divided Congress in the State is going all guns blazing against its own leaders — hand picked by Congress scion Rahul Gandhi. At the Centre of the bickering is a battle between the leader of Opposition in the State Assembly Pratapsingh Rane and the President of the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee John Fernandes.

The fight began over the latter allowing the GPCC office to be used by a Congressman to fling allegations of corruption against the former running into crores of Rupees.The Congressman accused the leader of Opposition of demanding a bribe and extorting money from him in exchange for mining permissions.  The ongoing State legislative Assembly Session is only a testament to this division.

Rane, a Chief Minister for nearly 20 years, and an elected representative for another 10 has confided to senior central leaders that he would not step into the party office, until John Fernandes is State president.

“The decision to change our leader of Opposition(lOO), depends on the MlAs in the ClP… If our MlAs come with the recommendation that they want change in the leadership, I will make sure that it gets implemented within one day”, Fernandes said on Saturday, when asked if he was satisfied with Rane’s lackluster performance as lOO.

Fernandes was appointed president in December last year and in his own words, tasked by Rahul Gandhi and the High Command with “reviving the party and ridding it of its corrupt leaders”.  And he went about it without a second thought. The changes he brought about to the party’s structures and replacing many party office bearers with younger faces has left him with more enemies than friends.