Goa Election 2022: 'Anyone who has defected from Congress, won't be reinstated,' says Chidambaram

In a direct warning to the dissident leaders ahead of the impending Goa assembly elections, Congress leader P Chidambaram stated on Sunday that anyone who has deserted from the grand old party will not be re-admitted. "In the Congress party, I have a very humble position... Anyone who has resigned from Congress would not be reinstated," Chidambaram was reported as saying by PTI. During the BJP government's tenure, as many as 15 of the 17 MLAs elected on a Congress platform in Goa's 2017 assembly elections defected to other parties.

The senior Congress official went on to say that the party has named 36 of the 37 candidates and that a name for the final seat will be released soon. He said the candidates have pledged that, given Goa's recent history, they will remain together and serve the whole five-year term as members and that if elected as MLAs of the Congress party, they will form a unified government.

On February 14, Goa will hold elections to elect 40 members of the Legislative Assembly. The ballots will be counted on March 10. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the major Opposition Congress remain the state's principal adversaries for the Assembly elections. Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress made its presence known amid defections from the grand old party to the ruling BJP by introducing veteran Congress member and former chief minister Luizinho Faleiro. On the other side, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which made an unsatisfactory political debut in the last state elections, has thrown its hat back into the ring, eager to make an electoral debut.

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• AAP
• BJP
• Congress
• Goa Election 2022
• TMC
• Chidambaram