'Sabotaged By Our Own,' Says Digvijaya Singh After Congress' Goa Fiasco

Panaji: Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh, who has been under attack from party legislators for messing up the party's chances to form the government in Goa, hit back at his detractors on Friday. Mr Singh said he had proposed a pre-poll alliance with the Vijay Sardesai-led Goa Forward Party - its 3 members later supported the BJP in the trust vote- but the plan was "sabotaged" by party leaders.

Mr Singh said he had proposed alliances with two regional parties; one headed by Babush Monserratte and the other, with Goa Forward. "Our alliance with Babush went through and we won 3 out of 5 (seats) but our alliance with Goa Forward was sabotaged by our own leaders. Sad!" the Congress leader wrote in a series of tweets.

Goa Forward had won 3 of the 4 seats contested by the party. "Had our alliance with Goa Forward gone through we would have been 22," he said. "Still Digvijaya guilty? I leave it to you to judge," the senior Congress leader said.

Now a minister in the state's BJP-led coalition, Mr Sardesai was a well-known Manohar Parrikar baiter during his earlier stint as chief minister and defence minister. Mr Parrikar too would run him down in public, calling him a political fixer. But as the Congress dithered, Mr Sardesai helped out Mr Parrikar to get more lawmakers on his side before the trust vote.

In his tweets, the Congress general secretary did not name the leaders who spiked the alliance with Goa Forward. But he has been under attack from state leaders in Goa, particularly newly-elected lawmakers such as Vishwajit P Rane who insisted that the party lost the opportunity to form the government "because of foolishness of our leaders".

Mr Rane had abstained from voting during Thursday's trust vote - conducted at a 48-hour notice after the Congress went to the Supreme Court to appeal against the Goa Governor Mridula Sinha's invite to the BJP - and quit the party, and the seat, soon after. A leader of opposition in the previous assembly, Mr Rane had signaled that some other leaders could exit the party too.

Mr Singh said it is unfair to make him a "villain" and went on to argue that he, and Congress secretary Chella Kumar had worked hard to strengthen the state unit from 2013. Of the 9 Congress legislators in the assembly, only six were active and "the whole organisation was in a disarray".

"Even Congress Leaders were predicting 2-4 seats (in Goa polls) for Congress," he said in another tweet, taking credit for checking the party's slide in the state that some had predicted would go to AAP.
"AAP reduced to zero, BJP came down from 22 to 13 and yet Digvijaya is a villain! Unfair!" he said.