Former Goa CM Luizinho Faleiro leaves for Kolkata; to be inducted into TMC on Wednesday

Faleiro, a seven-time MLA and former general secretary of the All India Congress Committee, submitted his resignation to the Speaker of the Goa legislative assembly on Monday and also resigned from the primary membership of the Congress.

A day after resigning from his Navelim assembly seat and quitting the Congress, former Goa chief minister Luizinho Faleiro left for Kolkata on Tuesday. Faleiro and about a dozen other leaders from Goa are set to be inducted into the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday.

Faleiro, a seven-time MLA and former general secretary of the All India Congress Committee, submitted his resignation to the Speaker of the Goa legislative assembly on Monday and also resigned from the primary membership of the Congress.

In his resignation letter submitted to Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi, Faleiro wrote that the Goa unit of the Congress had become a “cruel parody of what the Congress stands for”. He wrote in his two-page resignation: “Led by a coterie of leaders who prioritise personal gains over the responsibility we owe to our people, we have utterly failed to be an effective opposition… I see absolutely no hope or even the will to prevent the collapse of the party and change for the better.”

“I will support Mamata because she has fought and she has succeeded. She symbolizes women empowerment, which can bring the country back on the rails of development and progress,” Faleiro had said on Monday. He, however, said that he had not decided whether or not he would contest the assembly polls in Goa.

“The Congress has been a movement… but today the Congress family is fragmented. We have the Mamata Congress, the YSR Congress, the Sharad Pawar Congress… If we are going to fight the divisive forces ruling at the Centre and in the state, there is a need for a unified Congress… It is my dream that in this assembly election we start the process but finally in the next parliamentary election, we should all come together,” he said.

The TMC is set to contest all 40 legislative assembly seats in Goa. Last week, TMC MPs, Derek O’Brien and Prasun Banerjee, visited Goa. But Faleiro had said on Monday that he had not spoken to anyone in the TMC and he was in talks only with the I-PAC, the political advocacy group led by political strategist Prashant Kishor.

The TMC had said that it was “very serious” about contesting elections in Goa. The party is trying to increase its national footprint to strengthen West Bengal chief minister’s position as a national leader and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most formidable opponent in the country.

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