Goa Congress MLAs are expected to ditch the grand old party and join BJP, sources told CNN-News18. There are currently 11 MLAs in Congress and it is said that a few of them might switch over to the ruling BJP.
However, the Congress leaders, including its Goa desk in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao, on Saturday called it “totally a rumour”. They also said Saturday’s meeting with the party’s 11 MLAs at a hotel in Panaji had nothing to do with the conjecture, but was held ahead of the monsoon session of the Assembly, which begins Monday.
Speculation that some Congress MLAs are set to join BJP has been doing the rounds since BJP national general secretary and the party’s state in-charge, C T Ravi, had said back in May that BJP, which has 20 MLAs and formed the government with the support of five others, will have 30 MLAs by the end of the year.
The panchayat polls are to be held on August 10 and the code of conduct will come into force on July 20.
The Congress on July 4 asked the Goa Assembly speaker not to curtail the monsoon session scheduled to begin on July 11 as it was a possibility with the BJP- government in the state giving the excuse of panchayat polls.
Speaking to reporters after attending a meeting of the Congress Legislative Party (CLP) at the Assembly Complex in Porvorim, state unit chief Amit Patkar said his colleagues were ready to corner the Pramod Sawant government on various issues during the session.
“But in order to avoid embarrassing situations, the BJP-led government might curtail the monsoon session giving an excuse of code of conduct for panchayat polls. The BJP had curtailed the session this way during Zilla Parishad polls. Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar should not allow this,” he said.
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