PANAJI
The Congress on Friday questioned Chief Minister Pramod Sawant for threatening to 'reopen the Mapusa Urban Bank file' calling it an abuse of power for vendetta politics and dared him to open a case related to the bankruptcy of the co-operative bank against their party's North Goa candidate Ramakant Khalap.
GPCC vice-president, Sunil Kawthankar, said with the statement, Sawant has virtually "conceded defeat" as he knows that the BJP candidate for North Goa has failed miserably.
Khalap, a former Union law minister has been fielded by the Congress in North Goa. He was Chairman of the cooperative bank that ran into losses with non-performing assets (NPAs) piling. The bank subsequently went through an insolvency proceeding and its assets are currently being managed by a RBI-appointed liquidator.
Sawant had on Thursday uncharacteristically lashed out at Khalap blaming him for people losing money in the bank and stating that “these files can be re-opened”.
“I condemn the act of Sawant who is giving threats to the LS candidates from the Chief Minister’s chair. We dare him to investigate the case. Why did he wait till the elections to level such charges? Manohar Parrikar was the Chief Minister of Goa, but he never used such language,” Kawthankar said.
Kawthankar questioned why Sawant did not take up the matter of the Mapusa bank all the five years that he has been chief minister and suddenly raised the issue during the Lok Sabha election campaign.
