Trouble mounted for Goa Congress as five of its 11 MLAs in the 40-member assembly have gone untraceable. Congress president Sonia Gandhi rushed Mukul Wasnik to firefight the crisis in the state.
Goa Crisis LIVE: In fresh trouble for the Congress in Goa, the party said five of its 11 MLAs in the state have gone “incommunicado”. Following this Congress president, Sonia Gandhi asked senior party leader Mukul Wasnik to rush to Goa to “oversee the latest political developments” in the state. The development comes amid speculation that some Congress MLAs may join the Bharatiya Janata Party. For the unversed, exactly three years ago, a group of 10 MLAs from Congress had left the party and switched over to the BJP
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Goa Congress Crisis: Here’s Your 10-Point Cheatsheet
- The grand old party has accused two of its legislators – 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 also removed Lobo from the post of Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, which has 40 members.
- The announcement about the legislators going incommunicado and the sacking of Lobo from the post was made by the party’s Goa desk in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao on the eve of the assembly session.
- “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.
- “Both these people had been working in total coordination with BJP. One person – Digambar Kamat – did it to safeguard his own skin because so many cases are against him and the other person – Michael Lobo – for the sake of power and position. BJP wants to finish the Opposition,” he added.
- The development comes close on the heels of the political turmoil in neighbouring Maharashtra, where the ruling Shiv Sena split following a rebellion by senior leader Eknath Shinde, who became the chief minister after Uddhav Thackeray resigned from the top post in the last week of June.
- Shinde and his supporting MLAs had gone “incommunicado” on June 20-21 before moving to Surat and then to Guwahati.
- Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh alleged that it is not democracy, but “money power” of the saffron party.
- When a leading channel asked Michael Lobo about the same, he dismissed the reports and accused the BJP of creating confusion and spreading rumours about Congress MLAs.
- “I am sitting at home. There is no truth to these talks. I am not going anywhere,” India Today quoted him as saying Read More: ICICI Bank warns of Facebook, WhatsApp money fraud via UPI PIN; If you do this, you lose
