Rebel Legislators Of Congress Get Ministries

Three out of the ten Congress MLAs, who had joined Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recently, took oath as ministers in Goa government on Saturday.

While Filipe Nery Rodrigues, Jennifer Monserratte and former Deputy Speaker Michael Lobo took oath as new ministers, Chandrakant Kavlekar became the Deputy chief minister of Goa at a ceremony held at 3 pm today.

Kavlekar replaced the current deputy chief minister Vijai Sardesai.

On Friday, Pramod Sawant said that he had asked Goa Forward Party (GFP) legislators Vijai Sardesai, Jayesh Salgaonkar, Vinod Paliencar, Independent candidate Rohan Khaunte, an alliance partner of state government, to resign from their posts. However, the CM Pramod Sawant refused to name the ministers who would be inducted in the state Cabinet today. Apart from Kavlekar, Philip Nery Rodrigues and Atanasio Monserratte were the top contenders for the post, reports said.

The Goa Forward Party also created confusion after it said they had not received any official communication from the BJP. It also said that the present state BJP was not part of the discussion. We had discussed the govt with the Centre leadership of BJP.

On Thursday, 10 Congress MLAs had joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in the presence of the party's Working President JP Nadda and Home Minister Amit Shah. The number to BJP has increased to 27 MLAs while the number of Congress MLAs have reduced to just 5 MLAs.