With the two-day-old Pratapsingh Rane government facing trouble from within the Congress, the party today rushed its general secretary in charge of Goa Margaret Alva to Panaji.
Her mission: to pacify angry Congress MLAs who threatened to resign their seats in the Goa assembly.
Six of the 15 Congress MLAs, unhappy over the cabinet, have threatened to quit and reduce the Pratapsingh Rane government to a minority.
The Congress-led coalition with 18 MLAs enjoys a narrow majority of just one MLA in the 40-member house. Four MLAs from the BJP had quit last week triggering off the chain of events which led to the fall of the Manohar Parrikar government.
According to sources, the rebel Congress group includes party spokesman Jitendra Deshprabhu, Cuncolim MLA Joaquim Alemao, Lutolim MLA Alexio Sequiera and Agnelo Rodrigues and two others. After they threatened to send their resignations to the Speaker, Alva was rushed to Goa.
All of them are unhappy at not being included in Rane’s Cabinet. Only former Chief Minister Luizinho Faleiro and MLA Dayanand Narvekar of the Congress were inducted yesterday while the rest came from allies.
Governor S C Jamir had to delay the swearing-in yesterday of the new cabinet ministers by an hour as Rane could not decide who to include and who to keep out.
In the end, Rane got the Governor’s office to despatch a hurried appointment order inducting Luizinho Faleiro and Dayanand Narvekar into his team. Chief Minister Rane has decided not to allocate portfolios to his team to prevent further damage to his fragile coalition.