E-Paper
TMC’s Luizinho Faleiro backs out of Fatorda contest, says will focus on Goa
A young lawyer, Seola Vas was named as Goa TMC candidate from Fatorda after TMC vice president Luizinha Faleiro told the Trinamool Congress that he didn’t want to be tied down to one seat
PANAJI: Former Goa chief minister Luizinho Faleiro has backed out from the race to contest the upcoming Goa assembly elections. Faleiro, who was named by the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) on January 18 as the party candidate from Fatorda constituency against Goa Forward supremo Vijai Sardesai.
On Friday, hours before the window to file nominations for the February 14 elections was to close, the TMC acceded to his request and named a young lawyer Seola Vas as his replacement.
Faleiro reportedly explained to his supporters that the party announced his name without consulting him and he was peeved with the party leadership for having chosen him to contest in a constituency he wasn’t familiar with.
“I hand over the baton for Fatorda to a young, dynamic woman, Advocate Seoula Vas. I am grateful to the national chairperson for giving me the opportunity to serve the people of Goa. However, given my experience, it is my duty to work at the state level, campaign across Goa for the success of all the candidates. I did not want to limit myself to one seat so I requested the party to give the ticket to a young woman to contest,” Faleiro said.
Faleiro, who is a ‘founder’ member of the Goa TMC in its second attempt at finding a political toehold in Goa, led a group of motley bunch of Congressmen from Goa and joined the Trinamool Congress in the presence of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata in September. In return, he was appointed as TMC vice president and offered a ticket to the Rajya Sabha. He has since then been elected to a house of elders as a Rajya Sabha MP from Kolkata.
What followed was an “aggressive and lavish” campaign in Goa in which the Trinamool Congress began expanding its presence in the state and began welcoming members from other political parties in the state, mainly the Congress.
But two members of the core group that joined the Trinamool Congress with Faleiro, Lavoo Mamledar and Yatish Naik, have since then quit the party -- Mamledar after the TMC announced an alliance with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, a party he was once a member of but has since fallen out with, and Yatish Naik, whose request for a party ticket was declined. Another member Antonio Clovis da Costa, who also joined with Faleiro, also was denied a ticket.
But perhaps the biggest blow to the TMC’s plans and the perception it was hoping to build ahead of the elections, came when Reginaldo Lourenco, a sitting Congress MLA who quit the party and switched to the TMC back in December, resigned within three weeks of joining the TMC, saying that his voters and supporters had started “despising him” for having switched to the TMC. Lourenco also said that he wasn’t given what he was promised and is now contesting as an independent.
The TMC was hoping to cash in on disillusionment with the Congress but has instead seen itself, in several instances, having to make do with candidates who joined the party only after they were overlooked for the Congress ticket.
The party, however, has managed to retain a handful of winnable candidates and remains on track to open its account in its second attempt to establish a presence in the state. Back in 2012, the Trinamool Congress launched in the state under the leadership of a former chief minister Wilfred de Souza but failed to win any seats.
