Won't allow 'burglary' to happen in Goa this time: Chidambaram

Having learnt its lessons from the Goa debacle of 2017 when 15 MLAs ditched Congress to join the BJP, P Chidambaram, party in-charge of the coastal state, said the Congress is “doubly guarding” its house and will not let it “be burgled” this time.

The Congress and the BJP are busy engineering last-minute strategies to come to power in the coastal state with exit polls predicting a hung assembly. Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, who has exuded confidence in the BJP’s win, is in Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress, meanwhile, is ready to tie up with the AAP and Trinamool Congress – rivals in West Bengal and Punjab – for now, and has indicated that it would ally with “any party that opposes the BJP”.

To avoid a recurrence of the 2017 debacle, the Congress has sent its senior leaders P Chidambaram and DK Shivakumar to broker deals with the possible “kingmakers”.

The Congress had won 17 of 40 seats in Goa last time. However, the BJP, after just 13 seats, managed to grab power with help from independents and Congress MLAs who quit to join the BJP later. Congress’s then leader of opposition, Babu Kavlekar, had led the outgoing MLAs and was rewarded with the Deputy Chief Minister’s post by the BJP.

On Tuesday (March 8), Chidambaram told a media house that “the party that steals election is still around”. He said they are closely guarding their house from people “who can steal an election”.

Chidambaram, however, said the party has no plans to hide its candidates in a resort, as some media reports suggest. He said no extraordinary effort is being made to stop defections at this stage.

The party in-charge for Goa said the Congress legislature party will meet on March 10 as soon as the polling trend becomes apparent. Chidambaram also said that he is confident the party will get a simple majority this time.

Exit polls, as well as experts, predict neither the BJP nor the Congress will have a comfortable majority or win at least 21 seats on its own.

Also read: Christians now the target of Hindutva brigade, says Chidambaram

At this juncture, reports said the BJP is trying to stitch an alliance with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and other independents. The MGP, however, is reportedly not keen to rally behind Sawant, who had dropped the party from the Goa cabinet after he became the chief minister following the demise of Manohar Parrikar in 2019. Reports say the party may agree to come aboard only if the BJP relinquishes the chief minister’s post and sidelines Sawant.