Congress high command held individual talks before Goa leadership change, says Nimbalkar

Margao: The change of guard at the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee was not a hastily taken decision but was preceded by one-on-one discussions that the Congress high command held with every key stakeholder in the state, AICC secretary and Goa co-in-charge Anjali Nimbalkar said on Saturday.Nimbalkar, speaking at a press conference also addressed by AICC Goa in-charge Manickrao Thakre and attended by the newly appointed state Congress president Girish Chodankar, leader of opposition Yuri Alemao, and MLAs Altone D’Costa and Carlos Ferreira, said the high command had individually spoken with outgoing state chief Amit Patkar, Alemao, D’Costa, Ferreira, among others before arriving at its decision. She however didn’t specify when those meetings occurred, but hinted it was months ago.What transpired in those conversations, however, she said she wasn’t aware, as nobody disclosed what was discussed. She added that she had herself given the high command an account of constituency-level work she had carried out across Goa over the past two years.Nimbalkar was at pains to defend the process, insisting the AICC conducts internal surveys, analysis, and draws on its own intelligence network before arriving at decisions. “And when the high command arrives at a decision, we stick to it,” she said — a line that read less as reassurance and more as a reminder of where authority rests.Thakre announced that the Pradesh Congress Committee and other party committees would be constituted within 15 days.On the question of defections, Chodankar drew a careful distinction. While he stopped short of calling town and country planning minister Vishwajit Rane a defector outright, he made clear the door was shut. “We can’t let him in the party, because he is the captain of Goa’s destruction,” Chodankar said. He also conceded that fielding Calangute MLA Michael Lobo and his wife, Siolim MLA Delilah Lobo, on Congress tickets in 2022 was a “mistake.” The Lobo couple switched to the BJP shortly after winning those seats.