New Delhi: Eight Congress MLAs from the party’s 11 in the Goa Assembly will join the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), state party chief Sadanand Shet Tanavade claimed Wednesday, according to news agency PTI.
The BJP can split the party if it gets two-thirds of Congress MLAs, or eight, to defect. The Congress members can then avoid disqualification under the anti-defection law.
It is understood the eight MLAs are Digambar Kamat, Michael Lobo, Delilah Lobo, Rajesh Phaldesai, Kedar Naik, Sankalp Amonkar, Aleixo Sequira and Rudolf Fernandes. These MLAs also met Chief Minister Pramod Sawant at the Assembly complex, news agency ANI reported.
The BJP with 20 MLAs leads the ruling National Democratic Alliance that has a total of 25 members in the 40-seat House.
The Congress has 11, and is the main Opposition with the Goa Forward Party, which has one seat.
The Aam Aadmi Party has two MLAs and the Revolutionary Goans Party one.
Barely two months ago, the Congress got a scare when five of its MLAs went incommunicado, but later attended the Monsoon Session and claimed nothing was wrong within the party.
Out of the total of 11 Congress MLAs in the state, five — Michael Lobo, Digambar Kamat, Kedar Naik, Rajesh Faldesai and Delialah Lobo — had gone incommunicado, a senior party leader had said on 10 July.
Congress’s Goa desk in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao had alleged that “Lobo and former chief minister Digambar Kamat were hatching a conspiracy by hobnobbing with the BJP to engineer a split in the Congress”.
The July charge came after the Congress removed Lobo as Opposition leader, in a surprise move. Lobo had defected to the Congress from the BJP ahead of this year’s Assembly election, after the other party had denied a ticket to his wife, Sancha Delilah Lobo.
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