Goa
Goa Congress expels Leader of Opposition Michael Lobo amid rumours of defection
Panaji: Amid rumours of the defection of six MLAs to the BJP, the Congress on Sunday removed Michael Lobo as the Leader of Opposition in the Goa Assembly.
According to media reports, six to 10 Congress legislators led by MLA Digambar Kamat, are on the verge of revolt and are likely to join the BJP.
However, Goa Congress had vehemently denied reports of a rift in the state party unit and the possibility of its MLAs defecting to the ruling BJP.
"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," Dinesh Gundu Rao, All India Congress Committee (AICC) Goa in-charge, was quoted as saying by India Today.
He added, "We are expelling Michael Lobo from the party with immediate effect and he is no longer the Leader of the Opposition in Goa Assembly."
“The Congress party will not be disheartened or weakened. We will take up this issue in a more aggressive manner. We will take it to the people this betrayal that is being engineered by two people for the sake of power and personal gain,” Rao said.
Meanwhile, former Goa Congress chief Girish Chodankar has accused the BJP of offering Rs 40 crore to Congress MLAs to join the party.
Chodankar claimed that Congress legislators have been called by industrialists and the coal mafia, which has been revealed to Dinesh Gundu Rao by some of the MLAs, who were contacted.
BJP state president Sadanand Tanavde rubbished the allegations, saying that the Congress is "making baseless allegations about MLAs being approached and offered money", the India Today report quoted him as saying.
"This is what they have been doing all along, and there is no substance to these things. Goa BJP has nothing to do with the confusion in Congress and we haven’t heard anything from our party in this regard," he was further quoted in the report.
The absence of most MLAs in a party meeting this morning and a press conference in the evening intensified the rumours of mutiny in Goa Congress, the report added.
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