Sandesh Prabhudesai
20 November 1999
Following 11 legislators splitting from the ruling Congress party within five months, chief minister Luizinho Faleiro has been told by the governor to prove the majority on the floor of the House by Wednesday.
While Francisco Sardinha, leader of the splinter group, claims having 24 members on his side, Faleiro late last night met governor Lt Gen J F R Jacob at the Cabo Raj Bhavan, requesting him to go for a floor test.
Meanwhile, the two-member Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party as well as the one-member Nationalist Congress Party have submitted letters to the governor, supporting Sardinha's coalition government.
The 10-member Bharatiya Janata Party had already met the governor earlier, rendering its unconditional support to the coalition government. They have also decided to participate in the government.
Isidore Fernandes, the sole independent legislator in the House, is still undecided on whether to support the new government or not. His supporters however are pressurising him to go with Sardinha.
Faleiro, who is also the president of the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee, has tried to counter the move by expelling five Congressmen – the four ministers and deputy speaker Alex Sequeira – from the party much before the split took place.
But the move may not prove effective as speaker Pratapsing Rane, whose close associate and Valpoi MLA Bandu Desai has also joined the splinter group, appears soft towards the rebels. In fact Sequeira resigned as the deputy speaker for the same reason, it is learnt.
"There is no question of going back to the Congress under any circumstances", said Sardinha while talking to Goa News late last night at a Porvorim hotel where all the 24 MLAs are housed in under tight police security.
Sardinha appeared quite confident of forming the government by defeating Faleiro on the floor, if he really faces the House ultimately. It appears the move by Faleiro is a mere attempt to buy more time to plan out the counter-strategy.
The dissidents appeared to have hit at a right time when industries minister Churchill Alemao and MLA Babu Azgaonkar are away in London attending the World Tourism Mart while co-operation minister Suresh Parulekar, his another close confident, is still in Mumbai.
The BJP, which is bargaining for at least four cabinet berths, appears to have been still persuading opposition leader Manohar Parrikar, who is still reluctant to take up the cabinet berth.
"My cabinet would not be bigger than the size Goa had in the past", says Sardinha, hinting indirectly that it could be as big as 14. He expressed helplessness in having a jumbo cabinet since it is a coalition government.
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