TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The prolonged rift between alliance partners, BJP and MGP, appears to be widening with the saffron party coming down heavily on its regional ally, blaming it for not having leadership level talks on the Zilla Panchayat poll alliance, but instead shooting letters.
Making it an ego trip, the BJP wants its junior partner to approach it and still kept a window open, saying that the doors to an alliance were not closed for the MGP.
“The MGP has not approached us officially. They have written a letter to us instead. This kind of alliance doesn’t happen over letters. The leaders should discuss the details collectively,” BJP spokesman and MLA Subhash Phal Dessai said.
Maintaining BJP’s earlier stance, Phal Dessai said the party has no problem if the MGP wants to go it alone at the ZP polls, since the BJP too can fight the elections on its own.
“If our alliance partners don’t want us, then we are ready to go it alone,” he said, but hastened to add that the party had not closed the doors to an alliance but would like its partners to approach them for the ZP polls tie up.
The MGP had last week sent a letter to BJP proposing that they jointly contest the ZP elections. Simultaneously the regional party has raised its power aspirations, and started a massive membership drive across all 40 constituencies to strengthen its base looking forward to the 2017 State Assembly elections.
Interestingly, while the membership drive has seen many workers from different parties joining the regional outfit which governed the State in the first 16 years since 1963, the MGP wants to also go-ahead with the alliance for the 2017 elections as well. However, several sections of the BJP – both workers and MLAs – have expressed their reservations on continuing the tie-up for the ZP and the next Assembly elections.
