MARGAO
A meeting of Congress MLAs is on the cards to take a call on the selection of party candidate for the South Goa Lok Sabha seat, even as a group of Congress MLAs met at the residence of Margao MLA Digambar Kamat on Saturday.
Goa Pradesh Congress Committee President Girish Chodankar later joined the meeting to take stock of the situation ahead of the meeting of the Central Election Committee (CEC) in Delhi on March 19.
The meeting of the MLAs assumes significance and comes against the backdrop of the fact the group of MLAs led by Digambar Kamat had strongly rooted for the candidature of High Court lawyer, Adv Cleofato Coutinho.
Sources in the know informed that Digambar is believed to have maintained why the GPCC chief did not reply in the positive when he was asked sometime back whether he was interested in contesting the election.
Sources said that Chodankar is believed to have replied back saying his candidature was proposed by the district congress committee despite the fact that he did not submit any application for the ticket.
Discontentment, sources said, is also brewing in the camp of the Margao MLA, as the former Chief Minister was kept in the dark on what had transpired over the candidate selection following the meeting of the screening committee meeting in Delhi.
Digambar, sources said, is believed to have not taken kindly to the fact that neither the Leader of the Opposition Babu Kavlekar nor the GPCC chief thought it fit to keep him in the loop over the deliberations in Delhi given his status as the Chief campaign manager of the Congress party.
After much discussion, it has been decided to have a meeting of the party MLAs, tentatively on Monday, to discuss on the party candidate for South Goa, before the CEC chaired by Congress President Rahul Gandhi meets in Delhi on March 19.
