PANAJI
After cabinet minister and Calangute MLA, Michael Lobo, aired rebellious views for successive days, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and BJP’s general secretary in-charge of Goa desk B L Santosh who is in the State are attempting ‘dinner diplomacy’ in a bid to mollify him ahead of the assembly elections due in February-March 2022.
BJP sources said Sawant and Santosh are expected to dine with Lobo late Wednesday night after reports surfaced that he is preparing grounds to shift to the Congress party.
There is, however, no confirmation whether the three leaders actually met over dinner on Wednesday, and if they did, what transpired in the discussions. Neither Sawant nor Lobo were reachable.
Earlier on Monday, Lobo had made a quick trip to Delhi where media reports said he met with senior Congress leaders. Lobo on his return, however, denied he had met any politician in Delhi and insisted that it was a “personal and private trip.”
At a public event on Tuesday, the minister made it clear that his wife Delilah and political acolyte Sudhir Kandolkar will contest the Siolim and Mapusa assembly seats, while he himself will seek a hat-trick of victories in Calangute.
On Wednesday, speaking to media persons at the solid waste management plant at Saligao, Lobo said he will meet with the BJP leadership and discuss his strategic plan for the 2022 polls in Bardez.
“If the party accepts it well and good. If not, options are open,” Lobo said.
Both, Siolim and Mapusa, have strong contenders for the BJP ticket. In Siolim, party veteran and former minister Dayanand Mandrekar is already campaigning hard and has had several run-ins with the Michael-Delilah husband-wife duo in the constituency.
In Mapusa, incumbent Joshua D’Souza, whose father the late Francis D’Souza, who represented the constituency continuously from 1999 till his death in 2019, is the natural claimant to the ruling party’s nomination.
In the by-election held in 2019 post his father’s death, Joshua had defeated Khandolkar by a 1000-odd vote margin after the latter rebelled from the BJP and grabbed the Congress nomination.
Last month, former Maharashtra Chief MinisterDevendra Fadnavis, who is the overall in-charge of the BJP’s election strategy and campaign, had also attempted damage-control after Lobo had characteristically aired dissent in public.
Lobo was flown to Delhi where Fadnavis facilitated a one-to-one meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
