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Goa’s Sacked Congress Leader Of Opposition

Mumbai:
Ten of the 11 Congress MLAs in Goa attended a meeting today to discuss the events of Sunday when six of them went missing. The Congress has said the BJP was attempting to engineer defections and claimed two of its own leaders were involved.

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Michael Lobo, the sacked Leader of Opposition and his wife Delilah Lobo, who is also a Congress MLA, told NDTV that the events have been “blown out of proportion”.
Mr Lobo has been accused of trying to engineer the defections along with senior party leader Digambar Kamat.
Ahead of the meeting, Mr Lobo, who was one of the six MLAs missing on Sunday, told NDTV, “There is some misunderstanding. i’ll go and explain”.
Declaring that there were too many press conferences, he said they have “made their stand clear” in one interaction with the media. Any more will “confuse” the people, he said.
Digambar Kamat was the only MLA missing at the Legislature Party meeting. A former Chief Minister, Mr Kamat was projected as the Chief Ministerial candidate in the last elections too. But the Congress lost and he was miffed that he was not offered the post of the Leader of the Opposition.
The Congress has requested the assembly Speaker to disqualify Mr Kamat and Mr Lobo under the anti-defection law.
Congress sources said the BJP had a chartered flight ready to move six Congress MLAs out of Goa. A top BJP leader was personally in touch with the Congress MLAs, who were offered Rs 15 crore to Rs 20 crore each to defect to the BJP.
But the plan was finally dropped as the numbers did not add up, the sources said. To avoid the anti-defection law, there should be two-thirds of the Congress MLAs changing sides. With the party having 11 MLAs, there should have been at least eight MLAs ready to cross over.
The ruling BJP has denied allegations of involvement. “The BJP has nothing to do with whatever is happening in the Congress party,” said party spokesman Yatish Naik.
The crisis in the opposition Congress in Goa comes on the heels of the huge political crisis in Maharashtra that saw the collapse of the Uddhav Thackeray government and the installation of the Eknath Shinde-BJP combine.