Team Herald
PANJIM: As a fractured mandate looks more and more imminent in the post-March 10 scenario, Congress seems open to post-poll alliances. In the event of Congress getting 14 to 16 seats, Opposition Leader and the Congress Chief Minister in waiting, Digambar Kamat, agreed that parties opposed to BJP and which don’t want to see the BJP come to power, should work out some sort of a solution. “This is the only option in such a case,” Kamat said.
Speaking on Herald TV’s programme ‘Goa Wants to Know’, Kamat disclosed that at the local level there were no talks with the AAP or the TMC-MGP combine. “I do not know if there are talks at the national level. But I’m open to anti-BJP forces coming to power – this is natural,” Kamat disclosed.
In a freewheeling interview, one of his only sit-down interviews, Kamat answered questions on broad-ranging topics deflecting some contentious ones with practiced ease. For instance, on the issue of the Supreme Court observations on how the government of the day failed to keep a watch on mining illegalities, Kamat quipped, “The Supreme Court didn’t clarify which government didn’t watch illegal mining. It didn’t specify that it was the State government.”
Asked then why was his Mines Director Arvind Loliencar arrested in connection with the mining scam, he said, “It was not because of that. It was an issue of a signature that wasn’t correct.”
Asked specifically about the recovery of the Rs 35,000 crore mentioned in the Shah Commission report, Kamat said the Commission did not say that was the final figure.
On what is referred to as the JICA scam, where he is an accused under investigation, he said he was framed, and he had no part to play. “Those who framed me have been punished by God,” he said, refusing to elaborate further, though there were enough hints as to whom he was referring to.
The Crime Branch filed an FIR over allegations of kickbacks for a water development project sanctioned under the Congress government in Goa in 2010. The kickbacks were repeatedly given by the consultants Louis Berger to the Goa government headed by Kamat.
