In a boost for Congress ahead of Goa Assembly polls, Goa Forward Party chief Vijay Sardesai, party MLA Vinod Palyekar and an independent MLA Prasad Gaonkar extended their support to the party to defeat the BJP in the coastal state.
Sardesai, Palyekar and Gaonkar met Rahul at his residence here. The leaders from Goa said that the BJP government in the state was "corrupt" and it needed to be overthrown.
Sardesai, who contested as an independent against Congress after it denied him seat in 2012 and later formed his party, tweeted after the meeting, "we agreed to fight resolutely, wholeheartedly and unitedly on behalf of the people of Goa to end the utterly corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic reign of BJP."
The GFP chief's meeting also comes weeks after Trinamool Congress attempted to woo the party to its fold. However, sources said, GFP and Trinamool could not find a way forward as the latter wanted Sardesai to merge his party, which he refused.
This led to the collapse of talks between Trinamool, which is currently attempting an expansion drive and has set its eyes on Goa. Trinamool has wooed former Congress Goa chief Luizinho Faleiro, whom Sardesai had accused of denying him a seat, to its fold and given a Rajya Sabha berth from West Bengal.
Sardesai was part of the Manohar Parrikkar-led government but snapped ties with the BJP in 2019. He had won the 2017 elections on an anti-BJP plank but his decision to support the saffron party, which lacked the numbers, attracted criticism then.
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(Published 30 November 2021, 17:15 IST)
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