Alva rushed to settle Goa muddle

Vajpayee, Advani to lead BJP protest against removal of Parikkar govt.

The already-bizarre political situation in Goa took another twist as lobbying for Cabinet positions began in earnest.

Congress MLA Jitendra Deshprabhu has demanded a Cabinet berth saying that his supporters, who have put him under house arrest, would forward his resignation to the Speaker if he is not accommodated.

"They have taken my signature on a blank sheet of paper and are threatening that if I am not made minister, they would send a resignation letter in my name to the Speaker," he said last night, before he became incommunicado on Friday.

The demands from Deshprabhu and another senior Congress MLA Harish Zantye caused AICC General Secretary Margaret Alva to rush to Panaji this afternoon to ensure that the two-day old Pratap Singh Rane-led Congress government does not cave in.

While Deshprabhu has resorted to melodrama, veteran Zantye is allegedly close to the BJP and is quietly threatening to switch sides. "He has not made any public statement, but a quiet lobbying is on," said a source in Goa Congress.

Rane has inducted eight ministers uptill now. Of them only two""former chief minister Luisinho Fernandes and Dayanand Narvekar ""are Congressmen and this has led to deep resentment within the party.

Alva, camping at Panaji's Cidade de Goa hotel, has been meeting Congress MLAs individually and will meet leaders of the allied parties in the evening.

Earlier, Rane had been summoned to Delhi to discuss distribution of portfolios, but the deepening crisis in the Congress Legislative Party forced him to stay put in Panaji, at least for a day.

The non-Congress ministers in the Cabinet include Wilfred D'Souza of the Nationalist Congress Party, who became chief minister for brief spells in 1994 and 1998, Sudhin Davlikar of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party and BJP MLAs Isidoro Fernandes and Pandurang Madgaikar who resigned from the assembly last week leading to the fall of the Manoj Parrikar government.

The chronic instability of Goa's political set-up seems set for another roller coaster ride. Dismissed chief minister Parrikar, in fact, is said to be reconsidering his decision to move court against the dismissal of his government. The Congress government may fall on its own, quip his supporters.

Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will take to the streets to protest against the way the Goa government was sacked and has called a nationwide dharna, except in Jharkhand and Bihar, on February 8. BJP chief LK Advani, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and National Democratic Alliance convener George Fernandes will be leading the dharna in Delhi.

"We have brought back moral values to the politics of Goa, and we shall do our best to protect them," said BJP spokesperson Sushma Swaraj.

She refused to admit that Goa Speaker Vishwas Satarkar's disqualification of independent MLA and now Goa Deputy Chief Minister Philip Neri Rodrigues was "unfair".

Dismissed Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parikkar has also been advised to move court on the issue after seeking suitable legal opinion. According to Swaraj, the BJP will term the dharna as a "Save democracy, remove Jamir day".

Pinning most of the blame of the dismissal on the Goa Governor SC Jamir, Swaraj said: "The governor is not an appellate authority on the Speaker."

She referred to a press release issued by Goa's Raj Bhavan, describing Satarkar's disqualification of Rodrigues just before the confidence vote as "partisan". Swaraj said: "The governor should apply this adjective to himself instead."

She defended the Speaker's action by saying Rodrigues had, joined the BJP in 2002, and that a case had been filed against him.

"He had been summoned thrice during the case and refused to make an appearance, after which the Speaker disqualified him," she said. "If the members were not satisfied with the ruling, they could have got an injunction from the court," she said.

Swaraj said rewarding defectors with ministerial berths or "offices of profit" was against the 2002 constitutional reforms undertaken by the former NDA government.