Claim nothing wrong with party in Goa
Five Goa Congress MLAs, who went incommunicado a day before, attended the State Assembly proceedings on the first day of the Monsoon Session on Monday, and claimed there was “nothing wrong” in the Opposition party. The development came a day after Congress accused two of its MLAs, Michael Lobo and former Chief Minister Digambar Kamat of “conspiring and hobnobbing” with the ruling BJP to engineer a split in the grand old party’s legislative wing.
The party removed Lobo from the post of Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly, which has 40 members. Lobo, on his part, however, asserted there was nothing wrong in the party.
“There is nothing wrong. I don’t know what the problem is. All Congress MLAs were together. We went to South Goa for a meeting on Sunday.
They (Congress leaders) again wanted to have another Press conference which was not required, so we did not attend it,” said Lobo, whose wife Delialah is also a Congress MLA.
Lobo said they won the State election on the Congress ticket and they stand with the party. On replacing him as the LoP, Lobo said he had told the party that he was not interested to continue as the LoP.
Former Chief Minister Kamat and his Congress colleague Rajesh Faldesai also said they were with the party. The two MLAs said they were not in the party office on Sunday due to personal reasons.
“I stayed with the Congress. I led the party from front during the Assembly election (earlier this year), but after the polls, I was not given the post of LoP,” Kamat said.
Goa Congress chief Amit Patkar claimed the number of MLAs with the party has risen to seven, two more from Sunday’s count from the total strength of 11 legislators in the newly elected Assembly. Senior Congress leader Mukul Wasnik reached Goa and after a meeting with the party MLAs the new LoP will be announced.
“MLA Aleixo Sequeira and another Congress MLA have come to us. We had five MLAs with us on Sunday evening, now we have seven MLAs with us,” Amit briefed the media.
A day earlier, the Congress had said five of its 11 MLAs in Goa became “incommunicado”. These MLAs are Michael Lobo, Digambar Kamat, Kedar Naik, Rajesh Faldesai and Delialah Lobo.
Goa desk in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao had also said five other legislators, excluding those who became incommunicado, are with the Congress. They are Altone D’Costa, Sankalp Amonkar, Yuri Alemao, Carlos Alvares Ferreira, and Rudolf Fernandes. These five MLAs were present at the Press conference addressed by Rao on Sunday.
He had said the sixth MLA, Aleixo Sequeira, is in touch with the Congress leaders and is very much with the party. Congress leaders also met Assembly Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar to inform him about the removal of Michael Lobo as the LoP.
On Sunday, out of the total 11 Congress MLAs in the State, five -- Lobo, Digambar, Kedar Naik, Rajesh Faldesai and Delialah Lobo -- had gone incommunicado.MLA Rajesh Faldesai also said he was with the party and had informed Goa Congress chief Amit about his absence (from the party office on Sunday), as he was at home due to personal reasons.