CONGRESS REBELS PACIFIED!

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The revolt against the new president of the Congress party in the state, Girish Chodankar appears to have been silenced by the High Command Observer KC Venugopal. All the crying babies like former GPCC chief Amit Patkar, south Goa MP Capt Viriato Fernandes and Pratima Coutinho have all been offered lollipops.

EVER since Girish Chodankar was appointed as the president of the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee there have been vicious attacks on him. It has been alleged that Girish Chodankar was a failure because he could not prevent defections from the Congress party. It is true that it was during his tenure as president that Vijay Sardessai suddenly shifted his loyalty to Manohar Parrikar. This was not because of Girish Sardessai but the insistence of the High Command Observer who favored Luizinho Faleiro in preference to Digambar Kamat for the chief minister’s post in 2011. Nor can be Girish Chodankar held accountable for the mass defections of 10 Congress MLAs led by Babush Monserrate to the BJP in 2021. The problem is historically Goan politicians have been unable to live without power. Defections are hardwired into the genes of the Goan politicians.
The first of the defections took place way back in the early 1980s when Pratap Singh Raoji Rane defected to from the MGP. Pratap Singh Rane was the revenue minister in the Sashikala Kakodkar MGP government. The tragedy is that both the Congress and the BJP have an unhappy tradition of rewarding defectors. Pratapsingh Rane was anointed chief minister of a Congress government which followed the collapse of the Sashikala government. In 2006 Digambar Kamat was rewarded for betraying Manohar Parrikar. Every party has rolled out the red carpet to Babush Monserrate who has dumped parties as often as other people change their undergarments. Babush defected from the United Goans Party to support Manohar Parrikar to become the chief minister of Goa in 2002. Babush brught abut the collapse of the Parrikar government and joined the Congress. Both the Congress and the BJP rewarded him with a lucrative Town & Country Planning Department. There is no way Girish Chodankar as president of the Congress could have prevented the defection of the 10 Congress MLAs. Some of them were rewarded like Alex Sequeira, Babush Monseratte and Digambar Kamat. Others had cases against them withdrawn. Some of them were threatened with raids by the Enforcement Directorate. The Enforcement Directorate is supposed to act against money laundering which basically means dealing in black money.
GIRISH Chodankar is accused of selling party tickets. This refers to the allotment of Congress party tickets for the assembly elections. There have been wild allegations that he demanded several lakh or maybe crore to give party tickets to various candidates to contest the 2022 assembly elections. The most recent allegation has been by Manisha Usgaonkar wh has claimed that Girish Chodankar demanded and accepted Rs10 lakh for giving her a ticket to contest the Ponda assembly seat, which in any case she lost.
The ground reality is that State Congress presidents do not have any say in the allotment of party tickets to contest elections. At the most the State Congress president can make recommendations. In all political parties it is the High Command which takes the final call. In the Congress this means Rahul Gandhi to whom Girish Chodankar is very close. In the BJP it is Amit Shah who decides who will contest which seat in Goa. Everyone knows who calls the shots .It is therefore absurd to accuse Girish Chodankar off selling party tickets. I have personally known Girish for 40 years. Crores of rupees have passed through his hands. There has never been any charges of corruption against him. Girish has been custodian of the Congress party unds distribution Goa during every election…
THE BJP and Narendra Modi have realized that in several states the party does not have the political strength to win the elections. The hallmark of the Lotus strategy is that if you cannot win elections by fair means, foul means are okay. The Modi-Shah duo bent the election commission to their wily conspiracy. Lakhs of voters were deprived of the right to vote in the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls. This is what helped Modi defeat Mamata didi in West Bengal. It has been established that the number of voters deleted are higher than the margin of victory of the BJP in the assembly elections in West Bengal. The BJP still feared Mamata didi and went out to destroy the Trinamal Congress by bribing Mamata supporters to split the party. Based on the success of the thod phod in West Bengal they split the Udhav Thackeray Shiv Sena and the Sharad Pawar NCP in Maharashtra.

In the case of Goa the BJP realizes that the minority-dominated south Goa constituencies do not support the BJP.This was dramatized when their high profile south Goa candidate for the Lok Sabha Pallavi Dempo was defeated by a little known Capt Viriato Fernandes. Capt Viriato had the backing of all the NGOs in Goa. He had been active in the Save Dabolim movement and the opposition to doubletracking of the south western railway line which is being carried out to transport coal and ore to Karnataka. Unlike Manohar Parrikar who believed in inclusive Goa the present BJP wants to marginalize the minorities. The BJP has not learnt any lessons from the northeast where the minorities have rejected it. The Catholic vote is critical not only in south Goa but even in north Goa. In north Goa it is Babush Monserrate with wife Jennifer and Michael Lobo with wife Delilah Lobo who contribute four seats to the BJP. The BJP attempted to float a pseudo secular party called the Goa Congress party to split the minority vote. This was an action replay of the formation of the revolutionary Goan party before the last general elections. Girish Chodankar who has his ear to the ground exposed the Rs100 crore conspiracy to split the minority vote. The High Command Observer Venugopal rushed to Goa to control the rebellion and abort the formation of the Goa Congress Party. I understand that the Goa Congress Party was the brainchild of Amit Patkar, the mine owner from Curchorem who till recently was the president of the Congress unit in Goa. It transpired that the revolt against Girish Chodankar was actually a blackmail tactic. Venugopal reportedly has promised Amit Patkar the Curchorem seat in the next assembly elections. Similarly, Capt Viriato has been assured that in the next Lok Sabha elections he will continue to represent the Congress. Viriato has also been made a member of the seat allocation committee for the 2027 assembly elections. The Congress formula is to appoint all rebels as working presidents which is distinct from plain presidents. Girish remains president of the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee. However, he has now four working presidents presidents. At least they will work for the Congress instead of destroying it. It is significant that the Congress brand is still very powerful in Goa. Even the new party that was floated by Amit Shah and Satish Dhond of the RSS brigade wants to call itself the Goa “Congress” Party. The Goa Congress Party already exists. It was started by Dr Wilfred D’souza in 1994 when he was denied the chief minister’s post by the then Congress High Command. The election commission guidelines state that no new party can have a name resembling an existing registered party.
All the crying babies have got their milk bottle. Not surprisingly all the attacks on Girish Chodankar have stopped. Except by Manisha Usgaonkar who wants her pound of flesh from the Congress High Command. She also wants a ticket to contest the forthcoming elections or maybe she has higher ambitions and wants to replace Dr Pramod Salgaocar as the president of the Mahila wing of the Congress party.