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Congress wins Rajya Sabha seat from Goa

Sandesh Prabhudesai in Panaji

Former Union minister and Congressman Eduardo Faleiro was on Monday elected to the Rajya Sabha from Goa.

His win, helped along by the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party which abstained from voting, proves that the Congress government in the state is more or less stable.

Incidentally, all the four MGP legislators led by former Union minister Ramakant Khalap are in Delhi now, negotiating with the Congress high command to form a coalition.

The election saw Goa Rajiv Congress candidate Bhavanishankar Gadnis, a Delhi-based supreme court lawyer, mustering just 12 votes from 40. His leader Wilfred de Souza could manage 10 Bharatiya Janata Party votes besides his own two for Gadnis.

Meanwhile, All India Congress Committee emissaries Oscar Fernandes and Ramesh Chennithala termed the victory as 'a live demonstration of Congress unity'. Thus, the news of brewing dissension within the Congress legislature party, they claimed, was totally false.

The fact however remains that Goa Chief Minister Luizinho Faleiro is trying to rope in "like-minded and secular" opposition members to counter the dissension within. The MGP is his second target. Last month, he had bagged both the legislators of the United Goan Democratic Party.

The ruling party originally had only 21 members in the 40-member House.

The chief minister has publicly admitted that there have been attempts to dislodge his government by wooing disgruntled legislators who are vying for ministerial positions. Besides ministerial berths to the UGDP and MGP, the Congress has also offered one Lok Sabha seat to Khalap.

But a final decision would be taken only after talks with Madhavrao Scindia, the in-charge of Goa, according to Chennithala.

It is a fact that the Congress managed to win the Rajya Sabha poll by promising cabinet berths to aspirants. The future of the government would, thus, depend upon who among the original Congressmen and new coalition partners would be accommodated.

Chennithala hoped that the coalition talks would be finalised without delay, after which the chief minister could decide about the cabinet expansion -- after all, that is the carrot which has earned Faleiro's one-month old government the qualification 'stable'.

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