© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Weeks before the Goa Assembly election’s results are to be declared, the Congress has said that senior BJP leaders are already trying to poach its candidates likely to win–an allegation the saffron party has dismissed as a sign of “frustration”.
“We have received information that (health minister) Vishwajit Rane, (transport minister) Mauvin Godinho and (chief minister) Pramod Sawant and their brokers have started approaching our candidates who are likely to win and giving them offers. They are resorting to their old technique because they know their government is not going to last. We are publicly warning them. This is a new Congress. Not a single worker will go (to the BJP),” state party president Girish Chodankar said on Saturday.
“The election process is not even over, the counting of votes has not been done. If you dare to poach a candidate elected from another party, you will pay the price for that. The people of Goa will no longer tolerate this. This election was held on the ground that people will no longer support defection,” Chodankar said.
Ahead of the elections held earlier this week, the 37 Congress candidates took a pledge of loyalty in a temple, church and a dargah and signed affidavits declaring that they will not defect to any other party and, if elected, will serve their five-year term as Congress MLAs. Three candidates of the Congress’s ally Goa Forward Party also signed similar affidavits in Rahul Gandhi’s presence earlier this month.
“Not one of our candidates will be poached. We are sure of all of them and we have taken the precautions. We are issuing this warning to make it clear they (BJP) should not dare to approach any of them with such offers,” said Chodankar. He, however, said he did not want to reveal which candidates had received such offers.
BJP state president Sadanand Tanavade responded saying the allegations betrayed the Congress’s frustration. “These allegations are baseless and they have no meaning. It just shows the Congress’s frustration. They thought they were going to win, but now they know that it’s not going to happen. I am still very confident that we will win more than 22 seats and form the government with an absolute majority.”
The Congress won 17 seats in the last Assembly election, in 2017. Two of its MLAs resigned in 2018, contested bypolls from their seats and won them for the BJP. In 2019, ten of the remaining 15 MLAs defected to the BJP in a contested “merger” of the two legislative parties. Ahead of the polls held on February 14, three of the Congress’s five MLAs switched parties and its former chief minister Pratap Singh Rane decided not to contest the election. Margao MLA and former chief minister Digambar Kamat is the only party MLA who won in 2017 and contested this election on a Congress ticket. The votes will be counted on March 10.
