Sandesh Prabhudesai
22 November 1999
The ruling Congress party, which has come in minority with 11 legislators splitting, is slowly getting desperate as all their attempts to contact the dissidents and bring them back into the party fold are not bearing any fruits.
In fact they have been shifted to unknown destination so that no Congressmen could contact them. "They have been kept under captivity and even family members are not allowed to meet them", desperately complains chief minister Luizinho Faleiro.
Industries minister Churchill Alemao, who arrived today leaving his London trip half a way, however claims that all the six members are coming back. The remaining five already been expelled from the party.
The five expelled members include Francisco Sardinha, leader of the splinter group, along with three of his ministerial colleagues and former deputy speaker who have split along with six other legislators to form a coalition government with the opposition.
"They were expelled as a fall out of Lok Sabha polls. We can renegotiate if they are prepared to come back", says Congress observer Govindrao Adik. Another observer Ramesh Chennithala joined him today evening while their sole mission is to reunited the ruling party, which is on the verge of collapse within five months of coming to power.
Though Faleiro had the CLP meeting in which six dissidents were also called by giving public notice through the newspapers, he said the meeting had decided to give them a fair chance instead of filing disqualification petition against them.
Showing expulsion of five dissidents prior to the split, the Congress is planning to show that the remaining six do not form one third of the 21-member strong CLP. Based on this, they want to file disqualification petition against them.
Speaker Pratapsing Rane, who told the journalists in the evening that no such petition has come before him, indicated indirectly that he would not disqualify anybody in haste simply because he belongs to the Congress party.
"I am a layman having little knowledge of law. I will have to be thus very careful in handling such matters in order to also avoid repetition of the high court passing strictures against the speaker for a bad judgement", he says.
While vowing to act strictly within the framework of the constitutional provisions, Rane however clarified that no high command emissary had contacted him, making a request to disqualify the remaining six dissidents.
With hardly two days left for the floor test on Wednesday, the Faleiro camp is still trying hard to lure the dissidents. In spite of this, even the sole independent MLA has joined the Sardinha camp, giving up hopes of survival of the Faleiro government.
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