All the gods in the world fall short before men: Cong ‘loyalty’ pledge up in air

But almost six months down the line, the Congress again found itself in the middle of a defection storm. On Sunday, senior MLAs Digambar Kamat and Michael Lobo were accused of conspiring with the BJP to engineer the defection of at least eight of the 11 Congress MLAs. The Opposition party on Monday filed disqualification petitions against the two senior leaders even as they claimed to still be with the party. Later in the night, the crisis seemed to have blown over for the moment as Lobo met All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Mukul Wasnik.

Both Lobo and Kamat were part of the group that took the loyalty pledge back in January. “At the feet of Goddess Mahalaxmi, all 36 of us pledge that we will remain loyal to the Congress party that has given us tickets. We pledge that the elected candidates will remain with the party in all circumstances …,” the candidates said at the temple.

Following a similar pledge at the Bambolim Cross, the 34 men in the group offered a chaadar at the dargah. The pledge was widely publicised by the Congress to assure voters that this time its MLAs could be trusted not to switch sides. At the time, Kamat said, “We are very serious about this and will not allow any party to poach our MLAs. We are god-fearing people. We have full faith in the Almighty. Hence, today we have taken a pledge that we will not defect.”

The Congress candidates made the same declaration in an affidavit signed in the presence of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on February 4. The party’s ally Goa Forward Party also signed a declaration of loyalty. All this drew derision from the BJP, which asked how the Congress expected voters to trust its candidates if it did not trust them.

The following week, at an event in Margao, Gandhi responded, saying, “That (pledge) function was a demonstration of intent. It does not mean we do not trust our candidates. It is a demonstration that, we feel, we have a group of candidates who have integrity and who are going to work to form a government.”

He also defended the party’s stance to shut its doors to the MLAs who defected in 2019, even those comfortably placed to win their seats. “The people of Goa said they don’t want defectors and we accepted that with all our heart … the decision about defectors is not wrong. It is 100 per cent right,” Gandhi told the audience in Margao.

But, with fear of divine retribution failing to prevent another attempt at a mass defection of its MLAs to the ruling party, the Congress despatched Mukul Wasnik to Goa. The senior Congress leader, accompanied by Goa in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao and state unit president Amit Patkar, met Lobo, his wife Delilah, and MLAs Kedar Naik and Rajesh Faldessai on Monday night. Except for Kamat, all other Congress MLAs met Wasnik — first for a meeting of the legislature party, and then for one-on-one discussions.

After the meetings, Lobo, who had been labelled a “traitor” just the day before by the party, reiterated that he was still in the Congress while Patkar said the Calangute MLA and Kamat had changed their stance because they failed to get eight MLAs to their side in order to dodge the anti-defection law. Eight of the Congress’s 11 MLAs in the Assembly are newcomers while both Lobo and Kamat have a history with the BJP.

The Congress may have averted a disaster for the time being, but in a season of heavy downpours in Goa the dark clouds of defection never seem too far away for the party.