On September 14, eight MLAs who had been elected to the Goa Assembly on Congress tickets switched to the BJP, reducing the Congress’s representation in the 40-member Assembly from 11 to just 3.
On Sunday, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant announced that he will be going to Delhi with the eight freshly elected MLAs who switched from the Congress to the BJP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet with Sawant and the MLAs in the national capital.
The chief minister said that a meeting with the prime minister had been scheduled when he was present at the RSS’s annual convention on Sunday. I’ll be travelling with the eight MLAs and the head of the Goa BJP, he informed reporters.
In a merger of the two legislatures on September 14, eight MLAs who were elected to the Goa Legislative Assembly on Congress tickets—including former Goa chief minister Digambar Kamat and erstwhile opposition leader Micheal Lobo—decamped to the BJP parties. With this, the BJP’s strength climbed from 20 to 28 MLAs, while the Congress’s decreased from 11 to only three.
Two-thirds (then 10 out of 15) of the Congress MLAs had similarly switched to the BJP in July 2019. The defections happened then as well, when Sawant was in charge of the administration.
