Narvekar comes home on Monday

Sandesh Prabhudesai
25 August 2001  

Dayanand Narvekar, Goa's former deputy chief minister who has been chargesheeted in cricket ticket scam, will be readmitted in the Congress on Monday.

He is the third former minister who was arrested with scam charges after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power here and then embraced by the opposition Congress.

Earlier, the Congress had also admitted former minister Somnath Zuwarkar and Mauvin Godinho, involved and arrested for their involvement in co-operative bank and power subsidy scams respectively.

"We will make it a national issue if the BJP government does not stop using police and administration as an instrument to harass its political opponents", said Kamalnath, the senior Congress leader and in-charge of Goa desk.

He was in Goa for the last two days to resolve the differences within the opposition and work out modalities to form an alternate government. The Congress leader does not find anything wrong in forming alternate government with the help of habitual defectors.

"I cannot even call them tainted unless charges against them are proved in the court", argues Kamalnath, while justifying his party's action to readmit those who had defected in the past by toppling the Congress government.

After the two hung Assemblies provided 10 chief ministers and two brief spells of President's Rule in nine years to Goa, the 1994 Assembly polls had elected the Congress to power with a clear mandate of 21 in the 40-member House.

However, then chief minister Luizinho Faleiro went on engineering defections in other parties to strengthen his position, resulting in Congressmen splitting to form a coalition with the 10-member opposition BJP, led by Francisco Sardinha.

While the BJP is today in power in Goa by getting 11 other people from the Congress including two Christians and one Muslim, the totally scattered opposition party with six has now swollen its strength to 14 by readmitting all the 'betrayers', including Sardinha.

Going a step ahead, Kamalnath even announces his wish to give tickets to these habitual defectors in the next polls. "Winnability is the most important factor for us than anything else", he makes it clear.

It appears that the Congress prefers defectors than 'loyal soldiers' as the Congress leader has even announced their intention to form alternate government, provided their old colleagues split from the BJP and switch over. "I met their emissaries in this regard", he admits.

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