Goa Congress Says Seven MLAs With Party As Of Now; Mukul Wasnik In Coastal State To Control Situation

He said senior leader Mukul Wasnik has reached Goa and the new leader of the Opposition will be announced late evening.
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Patkar said Wasnik will hold a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party.
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“MLA Aleixo Sequeira and another Congress MLA have come to us. We had five MLAs with us on Sunday evening, now we have seven MLAs with us,” he told reporters.
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Patkar, however, refused to identify the seventh legislator.
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A day earlier, Congress had said five of its 11 MLAs in Goa became "incommunicado".
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The Congress had accused two of these legislators - Michael Lobo and former chief minister Digambar Kamat - of "conspiring and hobnobbing" with the ruling BJP to engineer a split in the grand old party's legislative wing.
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The party had removed Lobo from the post of Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, which has 40 members.
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The five MLAs, who had gone incommunicado, attended the monsoon session of the state Assembly which began Monday morning. They claimed there was "nothing wrong" in the opposition party.
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These MLAs are identified as Michael Lobo, Digambar Kamat, Kedar Naik, Rajesh Faldesai and Delialah Lobo.
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Goa desk in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao had also said that five other legislators, excluding those who became incommunicado, are with the Congress party.
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They are Altone D'Costa, Sankalp Amonkar, Yuri Alemao, Carlos Alvares Ferreira, and Rudolf Fernandes. These five MLAs were present at the press conference addressed by Rao on Sunday.
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He had said the sixth MLA, Aleixo Sequeira, is in touch with the Congress leaders and is very much with the party.
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On Monday, Patkar said the Congress will announce the new Leader of Opposition (LoP) probably in the night.
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He said Congress leaders met Assembly Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar to inform him about the removal of Michael Lobo as the LoP.?