MARGAO
The government Ordinance for the election of municipal chairpersons by show of hands seemed to have cleared all hurdles from the BJP’s path to have its men in the hot seat of Margao Municipal Chairperson after 17 long years.
The Party leadership, however, may still have a task at hand on how to soothe the ruffled feathers of the common BJP karyakarta on the ground, who in private as well as on social media raised questions about whether the new chairperson to be elected by the party-backed candidates belong to the original group or has just come to the party post the defection by the eight Congress MLAs.
Questions are doing the rounds whether the party-backed councillors will elect a chairperson, an original member of the BJP or the new comers, who have till recently part of the Model Margao group of Congress-turned-BJP MLA Digambar Kamat.
Workers on the ground have raised another serious question “ whether the newcomers have joined the BJP and if not, to make them members of the party before the election for the Chairperson’s post.
“When Kamat joined the BJP along with seven other Congress MLAs, his group of Margao Municipal councillors has been making presence felt at party programmes. But, we want to ask our party leaders whether these seven new councillors have all joined the party and are loyal to it or are still aligned to individuals and not to the party ideology,” remarked a worker.
Last month, the party arranged an interaction programme with Kamat and the city-BJP workers and leaders who have been at loggerheads with the Margao MLA for the last 17 years since Kamat quit the BJP to embrace the Congress.
Though the interaction was an attempt to ensure Kamat and his aide gel well with the original workers in the party, many say it will take some time for the two groups to work in unison with each other.
