Four Panaji Congressmen support CAA, 3 join BJP

PANAJI: A day ahead of BJP’s mega rally in support of citizenship law to be addressed by party working president J P Nadda, four Congress’ functionaries of its Panaji unit came out in support of the citizenship amendment Act (CAA) with three of them joining the saffron party on Thursday.
Congress hurriedly dissolved its entire Panaji block and said a new committee would be constituted after discussing with the block members.
These Congressmen, who had participated in the anti-CAA agitation in Panaji last week, said they were quitting the party as it was misguiding people.
“We are resigning as we oppose the wrongful stand taken by the party on CAA and the National Register of Citizens (NRC),” Prasad Amonkar, who held the post of the Panaji block president, said.
The move comes nearly five months after 10 of the 15 Congress MLAs defected to BJP in July.
‘Workers were pressurised’
Amonkar along with North Goa general secretary Dinesh Kubbal, Shivraj Tarcar and Javed Sheikh also said they were fed up with the party’s style of functioning and described Congress as “haywire” and “directionless”.
Congress functionaries said BJP had pressurised its four members to quit to “demoralise the agitation against CAA”. One of the four said they had joined BJP because Congress had become “defunct” with just four-five individuals taking decisions for the party.
Amonkar made it clear that the move to the saffron camp was guided by Panaji legislator Atanasio Monserrate, who joined BJP after being elected on a Congress ticket.
“We support Monserrate, because he is pro-development and he is helping the people of Panaji,” Amonkar said.
The four rebel Congress members said that they would support BJP’s development agenda.
North Goa district Congress president Vijay Bhike said, “BJP hopes that our spirit and our agitation against NRC and CAA will die down. That is why after taking our legislators, they are touching our workers.”