MAPUSA
Admitting that Congress made a mistake in the distribution of tickets for the 2022 Assembly elections, former North Goa District Congress committee president Vijay Bhike on Saturday disclosed that he had opposed tickets to candidates inducted from other parties on the eve of the election.
Bhike also called upon the voters to teach the defectors a lesson and reject them in the next elections.
“We made a mistake while distributing tickets in the assembly election. I had opposed these people who were inducted on the eve of the elections. Today, we had to pay a costly price for the mistake we committed,” Bhike said.
The North Goa District Congress committee chief was addressing a news conference along with other members in the party office in Mapusa.
Speaking further, Bhike said the party had made a similar mistake in 2012 by distributing tickets to members of five different families and faced the music from the voters.
He further informed that in 2017, the party did course correction and voters supported the Congress sending 17 members to the assembly.
“That we could not form a government in 2017 despite the mandate was another matter, but what is clear from all these elections is that we cannot take the voters for granted,” he said.
He said people should openly speak up against such treacherous acts carried out by the elected representatives and appealed to voters to reject such defectors in the next election.
“I thank the three MLAs “ Carlos Ferreira, Yuri Alemao and Altone D’Costa “ who stood by the party and refused to toe the line of the defectors,” he said.
Bhike also slammed Chief Minister Pramod Sawant for lying to the people of Goa that BJP did not want more MLAs as his government was very stable.
“Days before the defection drama played in front of us, the CM lied in an interview to a local channel that his government was stable and there was no need to get in more MLAs. This shows to what level BJP leaders can stoop,” he said.
