Smooth Sail or Rough Ride? Amid Kamat Revolt, A Look at How Goa Cong Defectors Fared After Jumping Ship

In 2019, a group of 10 Congress legislators was huddled up in a meeting while watching the India -New Zealand match in Goa. After several hours of deliberations between then leader of Opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar and the MLAs, a consensus was reached. They marched to the Goa speaker’s office and tendered their resignations. As India lost the match to the Kiwis, the Goa Congress lost 10 of its 15 MLAs to the Bharatiya Janata Party, wickets that have proved to be expensive for the party in the political match since.

By January this year, before the assembly elections in March, the Congress had just one MLA of the 17 left in their kitty. The Goa Congress once again feels backstabbed as six of the 11 MLAs who won in the assembly elections have switched sides and are on their way to join the BJP. The revolt is led by a former CM Digambar Kamat, who was also the chief ministerial nominee for the Congress.

Losing MLAs to the opposing party is not the only problem that the Congress has faced in the sunny coastal state.

In 2017, the party could not form the government despite winning 17 seats. The reasons for the failure were many. Party insiders admit that a lackadaisical approach, bungling of the negotiations by Congress leader Digvijay Singh and a bunch of defections led by Goa Forward’s Vijai Sardesai sealed the grand old party’s future in Goa. By December 2021, resignations came in quickly and the Congress’s strength reduced to just one MLA.

The Congress has lost 16 MLAs in the past five years.

A look at some of the MLAs who switched to the BJP from the Congress and where they stand today:

• Vishwajit Rane: Topping the list is Goa’s health and town and country planning minister. The son of Goa’s longest-serving legislator and veteran Congressman Pratap Singh RaneVishwajit resigned from the Congress in 2017 and joined the BJP. Despite his switch, he won the Valpoi seat with a comfortable majority.
• Ravi Naik: The former Goa chief minister was one of the high-profile MLAs who defected in December 2021. Naik had joined the BJP in 2000 to serve as the state’s deputy minister under the chief ministership of late Manohar Parrikar, but quit two years later to return to the Congress. In December 2021, he rejoined the BJP after 19 years and won the Ponda seat. He is presently Goa’s agriculture minister.
• Atanasio ‘Babush’ Monseratte and Jennifer Monseratte: The couple was among the 10 who defected in 2019. He has served as a minister in several governments and is presently serving as Goa’s revenue and waste management minister in the Pramod Sawant-led BJP government. Babush, as he is fondly called by his constituents, has jumped from one party to another in his career spanning two decades. Having first contested in 2002 on a United Goans Democratic Party (UGDP) ticket, he supported the Manohar Parrikar government in 2004 and later resigned, along with two other ministers, bringing down the BJP government in Goa.
  Monserrate then switched over to the Congress in the subsequent by-election only to be expelled from the Congress in 2015 for six years for “anti-party activities”. He then joined the Goa Forward Party in 2017, and joined the Congress once again, only to defect to the BJP in 2019 before the 2022 assembly elections.
  His wife, Jennifer Monserrate, a two-term legislator, also resigned with him from the Congress in 2019 to join the BJP and was made the revenue and IT minister in the Pramod Sawant cabinet. Interestingly, she made way for her husband to become a minister in the present dispensation.
• Aleixo Lourenco: A two-term MLA from Curtorim dealt a severe blow to the Congress after he switched over to the Trinamool Congress just before the state assembly elections. However, a month into the eastern India party, Lourenco quit and contested as an independent. He won the Curtorim seat.
• Luizinho Faliero: Former two-term Goa chief minister and long-term Congressman was another major bolt from the blue. Upset over the Congress’s failure to form a government in 2017 and the subsequent defections, the leader quit the party to join Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. Faleiro was initially declared as the TMC’s candidate from Fatorda, but he was asked to withdraw his candidature days ahead of the assembly elections to hand it over to a young female professional. This was done after the TMC supremo later decided to allot the ticket to woman lawyer Seoula Vas in line with the TMC’s party’s policy to empower women. Faleiro was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the TMC.
• Subhash Shirodkar: He was one of the first Congressmen who left the party aggrieved and joined the BJP. Having fought every election from the Shiroda constituency, he is presently the water resources and cooperation minister in Sawant’s cabinet.
• Filipe Nery Rodrigues: Winning the Velim seat for the Congress for four terms, he also headed to the BJP. He was made the coastal state’s water resources minister in the previous BJP government. Still, the leader quit the party at the last minute this January to join the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Rodrigues was disgruntled after the BJP dropped his name for the Velim constituency in favour of journalist Savio Rodrigues.
• Nilkanth Halarnkar: He won the Thivim seat in 2017 on a Congress ticket, joined the BJP later and retained the seat in the recent elections. He is presently heading the Goa’s fisheries portfolio.
• Seven others who jumped ship — Antonio ‘Tony’ Fernandes (Taleigao), former Leader of Opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar (Quepem), Dayanand Sopte (Mandrem), Isidore Fernandes (Canacona), Wilfred D’sa (Nivem), Francisco Silveira (St Andrew). ) and Clafasio Dias (Cuncolim) — stood defeated.

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