Goa NCP-Congress bury differences after midnight meeting
By IANSSunday, March 21, 2010
PANAJI - After holding the Congress-led Goa government to ransom for several weeks, alliance partner Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has decided to bury the hatchet and said it would support the finance bill in the budget session beginning Monday.
The decision to support the Digambar Kamat-led government was taken around midnight at a coordination meeting held in Mumbai attended by senior leaders from the NCP, which has three legislators, and the Congress along with the rebels to sort out differences.
It has been decided that we will allow the finance bill to be passed on the floor of the house. The decision was taken unanimously at the meeting, NCP spokesperson Prakash Bhingsale told IANS.
The meeting was also attended by Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Subhash Shirodkar, senior NCP leader Praful Patel and All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretary in charge of Goa B.K. Hariprasad, Bhingsale said.
He further said that a coordination meeting between the Congress and the NCP would also be held March 31 to straighten the issues between the two parties.
The three NCP legislators — ministers Jose Philip D’Souza and Mickky Pacheco as well as Nilkant Halarnkar - were spearheading a rebellion, along with two legislators from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) Sudin Dhavalikar and Deepak Dhavalikar and two other ruling legislators.
The dissident group calls itself G-7, or group of seven.
While neither Kamat nor the dissidents have explained what the “two demands” are, unconfirmed reports suggest that the NCP legislators were pushing for a large real estate deal on behalf of a union minister of the NCP that Kamat is allegedly stonewalling.
When asked if Kamat’s stonewalling of the multi-crore deal was one of the G-7 demands, Goa NCP president Carmo Pegado had refused to comment.
Goa’s 40-member assembly comprises 18 legislators from the Congress, 14 from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), three from the NCP, two from the MGP, one from the unattached United Goans Democratic Party (UGDP) and two independents.
–Indo Asian News Service
