Goa Congress says seven MLAs with party as of now; Mukul Wasnik in coastal state to control situation

A day after five out of 11 MLAs of Congress went incommunicado, Goa Congress chief Amit Patkar on Monday said the number of MLAs with the party has risen to seven, two more from Sunday's count.

He said senior leader Mukul Wasnik has reached Goa and the new leader of the Opposition will be announced late evening.

Patkar said Wasnik will hold a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party. “MLA Aleixo Sequeira and another Congress MLA have come to us. We had five MLAs with us on Sunday evening, now we have seven MLAs with us,” he told reporters.

Patkar, however, refused to identify the seventh legislator. A day earlier, Congress had said five of its 11 MLAs in Goa became "incommunicado". The Congress had accused two of these legislators - Michael Lobo and former chief minister Digambar Kamat - of "conspiring and hobnobbing" with the ruling BJP to engineer a split in the grand old party's legislative wing.

The party had removed Lobo from the post of Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, which has 40 members. The five MLAs, who had gone incommunicado, attended the monsoon session of the state Assembly which began Monday morning. They claimed there was "nothing wrong" in the opposition party. These MLAs are identified as Michael Lobo, Digambar Kamat, Kedar Naik, Rajesh Faldesai and Delialah Lobo. Goa desk in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao had also said that five other legislators, excluding those who became incommunicado, are with the Congress party.

They are Altone D'Costa, Sankalp Amonkar, Yuri Alemao, Carlos Alvares Ferreira, and Rudolf Fernandes. These five MLAs were present at the press conference addressed by Rao on Sunday. He had said the sixth MLA, Aleixo Sequeira, is in touch with the Congress leaders and is very much with the party. On Monday, Patkar said the Congress will announce the new Leader of Opposition (LoP) probably in the night. He said Congress leaders met Assembly Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar to inform him about the removal of Michael Lobo as the LoP.