Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram in a recent interview with news agency PTI stated that non-BJP votes in the forthcoming elections in Goa will be fractured by Trinamool Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, according to reports. The former finance minister of India further mentioned that whether the splitting of the non-BJP votes in Goa will benefit Congress or BJP remained to be seen.
Chidambaram, who will play the part of Congress senior election observer for the coming Goa elections, when asked about the defection of Congress leaders to the opposition parties said, “99 per cent of Congress workers remain with the Congress. I am not unhappy that Mr Reginaldo Lourenco defected to the TMC. The TMC has taken a losing candidate from our hands and, if it fields him in the election, he will remain a losing candidate”. A few days back, Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco had defected to Trinamool Congress after resigning as a Congress MLA.
On the speculations about TMC and Aam Aadmi Party posing as B teams of the Bharatiya Janata Party, P Chidambaram stated that he would refrain from commenting on the motives of any party and noted, “In a straight fight between the BJP and the Congress in 2022, the Congress will emerge as a clear winner.” adding, “The TMC and AAP are fracturing the non-BJP vote. Whether that will benefit the BJP, I cannot say,”
Furthermore, according to Chidambaram, Congress is the only party with deep roots in all the Goa constituencies. He said, “There is an overwhelming desire for change. The only party that has deep roots in all the 40 constituencies of Goa is the Congress. The people know that it is only the Congress that has the capacity to defeat the BJP despite the latter’s money power and misuse of state power. We hope to do well in the 2022 elections,”
Recently, a number of Congress leaders from the Porvorim assembly constituency with the support of independent MLA Rohan Khaunte submitted their resignation from the Congress party. Some even claimed that the Congress leadership in Goa lacked seriousness to contest the upcoming Goa elections. Gupesh Naik, the former Zilla panchayat member heading the Porvorim group made similar claims to the media where he alleged that the Congress party lacked seriousness for the coming elections.
Earlier, 5 Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders had left the party for playing vote bank politics. Names of the leaders who had quit TMC included Ram Mandrekar, Kishor Parwar, Komal Parwar, Sujay Mallik, and former MLA Lavoo Mamledar. These leaders expressed their dissatisfaction in a letter addressed to the West Bengal CM Banerjee where they claimed TMC did not understand Goa and Goans.
