In a bid to resolve the political crisis in Goa, Chief Minister Digambar Kamat met with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and her political advisors late Friday in Delhi. Mr Kamat who also held talks with Nationalist Congress Party central leaders told Deccan Herald from Delhi that he was hopeful of sorting out the political deadlock by Saturday.

Meanwhile, late Friday night,  rebel NCP MLAs indicated that the political impasse could blow over. “Congress, NCP high commands have accepted all our demands except one. We will give them time till Saturday to sort things out,” the NCP’s Goa legislature group leader Jose Philip D’Souza told reporters in Panaji.

The three NCP MLAs including D’Souza, Micky Pacheco and Nilkant Halarnkar who pulled out of the Congress-led coalition government have tied up with a group of six other MLAs, two of them from the MGP, two independents and one each from the Congress and Save Goa Front to form a pressure group and raise their stakes with the Congress. Earlier in the day the group had said that is was looking for “support” to form a new government in Goa. It had also been in touch with the BJP which has so far played a wait and watch game after Wednesday’s events which put the Kamat government on the edge. “No one can form a government without us,” NCP MLA and former tourism minister Micky Pacheco had told reporters.

The BJP which has been critical on Governor S C Jamir’s order proroguing the state assembly deputed Rajiv Pratap Rudy here to assess the situation.

A senior Congress minister said that the pressure group had asked for cabinet berths for unattached MLA Babush Monserrate and MGP MLA Sudin Dhavlikar, besides the PWD portfolio, held by Mr Churchill Alemao for the NCP.

The NCP rebels also wants the chief minister to take over the finance and home portfolios from his other Cabinet colleagues and has asked for a ministry reshuffle.