Goa government most corrupt in country: Dinesh Gundu Rao

Rao, who is also tasked with shortlisting of candidates for the polls, also said that the Congress would be 'doubly careful' with the selection process

The government in Goa is the most corrupt in the whole country and the state is also mostly badly administered, All India Congress Committee general secretary in-charge of Goa Dinesh Gundu Rao said on Saturday.

Rao, a former state president of the Congress unit in Karnataka, is on a four-day visit to Goa to strengthen the organisation and prepare the Opposition party for the 2022 state assembly polls.

"The Goa government is the most corrupt government in the country and the most badly administered state," Rao said, pointing to the chaos which played out in Goa last month, after more than 80 patients died of Covid-19 and the state led the country in the infection positivity charts.

"It is a very sad state of affairs, whatever they have promised, they have not fulfilled. Economy of the state has gone down... Goa has suffered. People of Goa have suffered, youth of Goa have suffered. There have been no jobs," Rao said.

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Rao, who is also tasked with shortlisting of candidates for the polls, also said that the party would be "doubly careful" with the selection process, especially not ruling out the possibility of victorious candidates being poached by the BJP post polls.

The AICC official said that the Congress was committed not to allow re-entry of the 10 MLAs who split the party in 2019 to join the BJP, but was non-committal about the status (of re-entry) of three other MLAs, who resigned from the party earlier and re-contested elections on a BJP symbol.

Rao also said that when the party comes to power in Goa, it would scrap all projects sanctioned by the incumbent government, which were detrimental to the interests of the state and opposed by the people.