Comatose Cong gave Goa to BJP on a platter

It’s ironical that just last week Ravi Naik had come here to plead with the Congress high command for removing Louizine Faleiro from the presidentship of the Goa Congress. Faleiro has become a hate figure for a large number of party legislators because of his style of functioning. The party MLAs have been repeatedly demanding that he be replaced but the central leadership paid no heed.

“Even last week we could have turned the tables on the BJP and prevented it from forming a government in Goa,” lamented a senior party leader. “But there seems to be a lack of political will and vision. The party has just drifted.”

The implications go well beyond the state. In Chhattisgarh, which will be born on November 1, the Congress will be forming the government with a thin majority. It has 48 MLAs in a house of 90 and half of them are tribals. Given the tussle in the Congress over Chief Ministership and the money power that the BJP commands, the government is going to be highly vulnerable.

The BJP has set its eyes on other small states like Nagaland where the Congress is in the saddle. The Congress lost out in Meghalaya last year after the election of P.A.Sangma who managed to engineer events in such a way that a non-Congress government was installed in Shillong.

Insiders say the situation in Goa could have been saved even three days ago before Ravi Naik gave a letter to the Speaker declaring his intent of forming a separate four-member group which was joining the BJP. That he was planning such a step was an open secret, and had the Congress “suspended” two of these four men, the “split” could have been preempted.

The Congress could have then moved to form a government again with the help of Sardinha’s group, its own eight members, the NCP and two independents not with the BJP.

Had the Congress high command been willing to remove PCC chief Faleiro, opine Congress sources, Sardinha might have made common cause with the Congress again. Sardinha had led a revolt from the Congress last November, with 10 other Congress MLAs, and joined hands with the BJP’s 10- member group to form a government. He had replaced Faleiro as Chief Minister.

Sardinha, a one-time Lok Sabha MP, had specially come to Delhi to meet Atal Behari Vajpayee and succeeded in convincing him that the BJP should participate in his government.

The Congress suffered another setback two months ago when five more MLAs left its ranks. They were led by Shaikh Hassan, the only Muslim MLA in Goa, who was elected from Vasco.

The third break in the Congress came two days ago when Ravi Naik led a group of four MLAs out of the party. and this time all of them joined the BJP. All four of them are Hindus. Besides them, four out of the five MLAs led by Shaikh Hassan, who had quit the Congress two months ago, also joined the BJP. The BJP managed the rest.

The Congress took solace today by accusing the “communal and fascist” BJP of “engineering defections, horsetrading, attaining ower at any cost”. But the plain and simple fact is that the party has been caught napping.