With eight of its 11 MLAs joining the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Goa on Wednesday, a question mark has arisen over the Congress retaining the Leader of Opposition post in the Assembly in the changed political scenario.
Left with just three MLAs, the Congress does not have the required one tenth of the legislative strength in the 40-member House to claim the Cabinet minister-level post. According to political analysts, the Legislative Assembly Speaker will have to decide on the position of Leader of Opposition as the Congress does not have the required number of MLAs to stake claim to the post after the defection of its legislators.
Usually, an opposition party should have at least one tenth of the strength of the House to claim the Leader of Opposition post. In case of Goa, this number comes to four. The Congress currently has only three MLAs, said political analyst and advocate Cleofato Coutinho. Coutinho said it is the Speaker's prerogative to whether or not count other opposition MLAs to make up for the required number of four needed for the post.
The Goa Assembly has now seven members in the Opposition - three of the Congress, two of the Aam Aadmi Party, one each of the Goa Forward Party and the Revolutionary Goans party.
In July, the Congress had removed Michael Lobo from the post of Leader of Opposition for "conspiring" and "hobnobbing with the BJP to engineer a split" in the party's legislative wing. However, his successor was not named. Lobo is one of the eight MLAs who have now changed their loyalties.
Before a formal switch over by the MLAs on Wednesday, a resolution was passed in a Congress Legislature Party meeting in Panaji to merge with the BJP.
A similar scene played out in 2019, when then-Leader of Opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar had merged the CLP with ten members into the BJP. Kavlekar was later rewarded with the post of Deputy Chief Minister. Coutinho said the merger claim of the eight Congress MLAs is a "legal fiction to save themselves from (attracting) defection (law)."
The CLP remains "alive" as there are still three MLAs who have not merged themselves into the BJP, he said.
The three Congress MLAs who did not switch sides are Yuri Alemao, Altone D'Costa and Carlose Alvares Ferreira. Asked whether the merger was valid, Ferreira, the MLA from Aldona and a former Advocate General of Goa, said he will have to go through legal provisions before commenting on the issue.
Another Congress MLA Altone D'Costa, elected from the Quepem constituency, said he remains firmly with the party and will continue to play the role of an opposition legislator. Goa Pradesh Congress Committee President Amit Patkar was not available for comments.