Goa Congress sacks Michael Lobo as leader of Oppn for 'hatching defections with BJP'

Panaji, July 10: Congress on Sunday removed Michael Lobo as the leader of the Opposition in the Goa Assembly for engineering defections in the party.

The party, in a press conference, claimed that a "conspiracy" was hatched by some of its leaders along with the BJP to weaken it and engineer defections.

"A conspiracy was hatched by some of our own leaders with the BJP to see that the Congress party in Goa is weakened and to engineer defections. This conspiracy was led by two of our own leaders LoP Michael Lobo and Digambar Kamat," ANI quoted Congress Goa in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao as saying.

Rao said that a new leader will be elected in place of Lobo. "Whatever action has to be taken by law against this kind of defection, anti-party work will follow. Let's see how many people will stay or move. Five of our MLAs are here, we're in touch with some more MLAs and they will be along with us," the Congress Goa in-charge said.

"Both these people had been working in total coordination with BJP. One person - Digambar Kamat - did it to safeguard his own skin because so many cases are against him and the other person - Michael Lobo - for the sake of power and position. BJP wants to finish the Opposition," he added.

Meanwhile, Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi has asked Mukul Wasnik to rush to Goa to oversee the latest political developments, the party's general secretary KC Venugopal said.

Shortly after Lobo was sacked, his wife and MLA Deliah Lobo met Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant at his residence. On being asked if Congress MLAs came to meet him, Sawant said, "As CM, many people come to meet me. Tomorrow is Assembly, people came to meet me regarding that. I am busy with my assembly work... Why will I comment on issues related to other parties?"

Earlier, there were reports of several Congress MLAs were likely to switch over to the BJP, but the party had denied the speculations of its leaders crossing over to the ruling party.

It may be recalled that during the polls earlier this year the grand old party had made its MLAs take a loyalty pledge to prevent them from switching sides.

The 40-member Goa assembly has 25 legislators from the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and 11 from Congress.