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Goans mourn on FB over Team India, Team Congress

Last Updated 11 July 2019, 14:44 IST

The usual football-loving Susegado Goans, who historically never wasted their exertions over cricket and rarely raised an eyebrow over political developments, however, mourned twice on social media on Wednesday, through Thursday.

The first set of groans came when the ‘Men in Blue’ lost to New Zealand in the One Day International World Cup at Manchester. The second spate of ruing started on Wednesday and stretched through Thursday, after the dramatic split in the Congress legislature party and the subsequent merger of the 10-member Congress unit into the BJP; a development which has sparked outrage even among the BJP faithful.

Goa has often been the ‘forefront’ of political defections for more than two decades now, but Wednesday’s developments sparked an outrage on the social media.

Cartoonist Mahesh Divekar drew comparisons between the loss of Indian Cricket team captain Virat Kohli at Manchester to the ‘performance’ of the now former Leader of Opposition Chandrakant alias Babu Kavlekar’s team of Congress MLAs on the banks of the Mandovi river.

“What a coincidence! Virat’s returning home with his 10 and Babu leaving home with his 10,” Divekar said on Facebook.

Content writer Mark Rocha, also drew a cricketing analogy to articulate his angst about the political developments. “What a coincidence. India lost 10 wickets, so did Congress,” he said.

Academic and theatre personality Kaustubh Naik posted “BJP should’ve bought 12 MLAs from Congress. It would’ve been cheaper by the dozen,” saying the BJP should have bargained harder in its efforts to win over Congress MLAs.

Amid ire vented by BJP workers at the induction of 10 Congress MLAs — especially newly elected Congress MLA Atanasio Monserrate accused of raping a minor girl— into the BJP on Wednesday, official on special duty at the Chief Minister Office (CMO) Atmaram Barve wrote on Facebook, that party workers had full right to express their displeasure, but also called for a practical outlook and urged them to “wait for things to normalise”.

“This is definitely not the first time that someone has shifted sides to join BJP. Some people are making a huge issue out of it, just because it suits their convenience,” Barve said, even as Giriraj Pai Vernekar, a former OSD to former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s office suggested that Barve was trying to “defend the indefensible”.

“While I sympathise with your position, having to defend the indefensible, do it a little more subtly. That’s honest advice by an aggrieved karyakarta who needs no certificate of loyalty,” Vernekar said.

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(Published 11 July 2019, 13:54 IST)

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