PANAJI
The Congress on Wednesday heaved a sigh of relief and rolled out a video message by former Chief Minister and its sitting MLA Pratapsingh Rane, who expressed his commitment to the opposition party, amid suggestions by former Maharashtra Chief Minister and BJP’s Goa in-charge Devendra Fadnavis, that Rane could be the next in the long line of legislators to join the saffron party.
State Congress President Girish Chodankar, who addressed a press conference in Panaji, also slammed Fadnavis, accusing him of maligning the dignity of the office he previously held as Chief Minister of Maharashtra by lying about Rane’s proposed move to quit the Congress and join the ruling party.
In his video message, Rane also accused the BJP leader of spreading canards. “The news that is being spread that I am quitting my party is a figment of imagination. These people just want to spread canards. I am not leaving my party,” Rane said.
“I belong to the Congress for over 45 years and I do not think that I would ever at this juncture leave the party. I belong to the Indian National Congress and that’s it,” the former Chief Minister also said.
The retort from Pratapsingh Rane also comes months after he was criticised by a section of the Congress leadership for meeting Fadnavis in the company of Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, which an embarrassed Congress leadership was forced to describe as merely a courtesy meeting between the two leaders.
On Wednesday, after playing out Rane’s video message at a press conference, Chodankar lashed out at Fadnavis saying as a former Chief Minister of a big state like Maharashtra, he expected the latter to speak responsibly.
“Fadnavis is just furthering the BJP tradition of telling lies. He made a statement about Pratapsingh Rane. It was full of lies. We did not expect that a CM of a big state would lie like this. We know that BJP leaders in Goa lie, but did not know that about Fadnavis. We condemn his statement on Rane,” Chodankar said.
Chodankar also said that the “lies” spoken by the BJP leadership shows that despite raking in so many MLAs, they were still not confident of winning the 2022 assembly polls.
“His (Fadnavis) frustration is evident because they cannot win even with so many MLAs,” Chodankar said.
