TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: Accusing alliance partner Congress of match fixing with the BJP, ahead of the April 12 Lok Sabha polls, the Nationalist Congress Party announced that it would contest both the north and south Goa seats on its own. This is clearly a fallout of the Congress trudging the road to end its long-standing alliance with the NCP, the party said.
Addressing media persons on Friday, party spokesman Trajano D’Mello alleged that Congress leaders in Goa were acting like BJP agents by sending wrong inputs to its high command that the party (Congress) can win both seats without NCP support.
“The election wave in Goa is such that people want Congress and NCP to have alliance and fight polls. It’s only the Congress-NCP alliance that can defeat BJP,” he said.
He informed that a three member committee headed by party state president Nilkant Halarnkar has been formed to explore the possibilities of garnering support from like-minded political parties, who may not be contesting the parliamentary polls. The other two members of the committee are senior Vice President Jose Philip D’Souza and Trajano himself.
The spokesman said that committee will have dialogues with all regional political parties to field a consensus candidate on the NCP symbol. He however refused to name any party stating that “the talks are yet to begin with anyone.”
Regional outfits such as Goa Democratic Front (GDF), Goa Vikas Party (GVP) and Goa Su-Raj party (GSRP) have expressed their willingness to contest the polls. While GDF has named former Congressman Dayanand Narvekar for the north Goa seat, GSRP are planning to field candidates on both seats.
NCP, arguing that its alliance with Congress had petered out, said that party supremo Sharad Pawar and Goa desk in charge Prafulla Patel are unhappy with the Congress and had indicated to the local unit that it should contest both the seats. NCP rattled out the earlier shortlisted names of Nilkant Halarnkar and Salim Sayyad for north Goa and Jose Philip D’Souza and Yuri Alemao for South Goa. He said that the candidates would be announced by next week.
AAP and BJP have already announced their candidates, while Congress has shortlisted the names, but fell short of declaring them publicly due to last minute dissension within the party.
