AERIAL VIEW
Be it Rohan Khuante, Jayesh Salgaocar, Ravi Naik, Pravin Zantye, they all resigned as they wanted to contest on some other party ticket and to a certain extent is justifiable as they would go to the electorate again and seek their mandate. If they feel the leader is right, they would re-elect him or dump him if they feel he was wrong. In short, they did not enjoy any office of profit after switch-over.
However, the case of Michael Lobo and Luizinho Faleiro is different. Luizinho Faleiro resigned from the Congress and joined the Trinamool Congress only for personal interests.
He joined TMC only because he was promised a Rajya Sabha ticket.
SURAJ NANDREKAR
Editor, Goemkarponn
As we reach the fag end of this Seventh Legislative Assembly of Goa, we see resignations and defections of ministers and MLAs almost every day.
Michael Lobo today became the first Minister to resign and set to join Congress. Pravin Zantye also resigned as MLA and is set to join MGP.
With the elections to the Eighth Goa Legislative Assembly slated for February 14, one may really not call these switch-overs as defections simply because it has come in the last few days.
Defection is when the two MGP leaders – Deepak Pauskar and Babu Azgaonkar resigned and joined BJP in the dead of night, and so also 10 Congress MLAs who split from Congress and joined BJP.
These are defections as they did not seek people’s mandate before switching over.
Be it Rohan Khuante, Jayesh Salgaocar, Ravi Naik, Pravin Zantye, they all resigned as they wanted to contest on some other party ticket and to a certain extent is justifiable as they would go to the electorate again and seek their mandate. If they feel the leader is right, they would re-elect him or dump him if they feel he was wrong. In short, they did not enjoy any office of profit after switch-over.
However, the case of Michael Lobo and Luizinho Faleiro is different. Luizinho Faleiro resigned from the Congress and joined the Trinamool Congress only for personal interests.
He joined TMC only because he was promised a Rajya Sabha ticket.
Similar is the case of former Minister Michael Lobo. He claims to have been dissatisfied with the BJP leadership for a long time and also spoke to them about being neglected.
The question is, why did he wait till the end of the term to tender his resignation? Why did he not resign earlier and enjoy all the privileges as a minister till the end of the term? He was made the Minister in the Cabinet; what more did he expect?
Though this came at the fag end, Lobo’s switch-over betrayed people’s mandate.
Lobo may give any reason, but we all know he wanted to quit the party in 2017 as he was asking for a ticket to his wife from Saligao then. However, then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar successfully convinced him to stay back, which Devendra Fadnavis and Co failed to do this time.
While Lobo is wrong, BJP cannot absolve itself from the “neglect” allegations.
In 2017, when the BJP had just 13 seats, it was the major efforts of Michael Lobo to bring together Goa Forward, MGP and Independent MLA Rohan Khaunte that helped in Manohar Parrikar’s government formation.
Even in 2019, when the Dr Pramod Sawant government was in a danger zone as allies threatened to pull the carpet, Lobo saved Sawant’s chair by engineering a major split in the Congress. He took pains to see that 10 MLAs defected from Congress and joined the BJP.
Of Course, he did all this to get a Cabinet berth, but Sawant has to be grateful to Lobo for successfully completing his term as CM.