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Former Goa CM Digambar Kamat remains silent about his future in Congress
The latest to add fuel to the fire was his own party president Girish Chodankar who claimed that Kamat has a ‘standing offer’ from the BJP to join the saffron party.
Goa’s Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat has remained strangely non committal when asked whether speculation linking him to be the latest of Congress leaders from Goa to switch sides to BJP was correct.
The former Chief Minister who began his career in the party and was thrice elected as a BJP MLA from Margao ever since 1994 when the BJP opened its account in the state, has been the subject of intensifying speculation that he will switch sides to the BJP.
The latest to add fuel to the fire was his own party president Girish Chodankar who claimed that Kamat has a ‘standing offer’ from the BJP to join the saffron party.
“Local and central BJP leaders are convinced that Pramod Sawant is a failure and he doesn’t have the capacity to solve the issues plaguing Goa including the mining crisis. They feel that Digambar Kamat has the capacity to resolve the issues. Many BJP leaders are after Kamat,” Chodankar told reporters recently.
Kamat himself has remained non committal while also refusing to rubbish speculation linking him with the BJP.
“I am a member of @INCIndia. I am [the] Congress Legislature Party Leader & I am also the Leader of the Opposition of Goa. My focus and priority is to lead a constructive opposition on issues concerning the Common Man,” Kamat tweeted on Saturday in response to a straightforward question: ‘Are you joining BJP?’
Several Twitter users were quick to point out that the word ‘No’ was missing from the reply.
To a similar question posed at a press conference earlier this week, Kamat replied saying he chose to live in the present and speculation concerning the ‘future’ did not concern him.
Kamat was a senior figure in the Goa BJP, being one among four MLAs to be first elected on party tickets in the state. However, in 2005, no sooner the Vajpayee-led government was defeated in the Lok Sabha polls, Kamat was one among several legislators who withdrew support to the BJP-government then led by Manohar Parrikar resulting in its collapse.
In 2007, Kamat was elected leader of the Congress legislative party and became the first Chief Minister in Goa state to complete a full term a full two decades after the former union territory attained statehood.
The BJP has been quick to rubbish rumours that they were actively poaching Kamat with party president Vinay Tendulkar claiming the party was “not interested in welcoming those who had betrayed it”.
This isn’t the first time Kamat is being linked with a move to the BJP. In March last year, with then chief minister Manohar Parrikar having passed away speculation was rife that the BJP, which was lacking a credible second rung leadership, would approach Kamat with an offer to succeed Parrikar. A late night flight to Delhi the same evening Parrikar passed away didn’t help Kamat’s cause.
However, Kamat made it clear back then that joining the BJP would be ‘political suicide’ words he may have to rephrase after the Congress itself has been reduced to five members in the 40 member Goa assembly.
