PANAJI: Accusing the BJP-led coalition government in Goa of using "brute force" of numbers to push their agenda through, former Deputy Chief Minister Vijai Sardesai on Tuesday said that what happened in JNU could happen in the Goa Assembly soon.
"What is happening in JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi) can happen tomorrow in the Assembly here. The symptoms are very much the same. It is 'dadagiri'. What they (treasury benches) say becomes law... They have the numbers," Sardesai said at a joint press conference called by opposition leaders after their plea to move an adjournment motion to discuss the ongoing Mhadei interstate water sharing dispute was disallowed by Speaker Rajesh Patnekar earlier.
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Sardesai was referring to violence against students and teachers in the JNU campus in Delhi on Sunday.
"This number, 27, or 30, is to bulldoze and not to respect dissent. This is very undemocratic," Sardesai said, suggesting that a brute majority enjoyed by the BJP-led coalition government in Goa was being used to overpower the opposition in the Assembly.
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Ten opposition MLAs had collectively pleaded to the Speaker to allow them leave to move an adjournment motion to discuss the Mhadei issue, during the one-day session of the Assembly on Tuesday.
Following several rounds of defections from Opposition MLAs over the last three years, the BJP currently has 27 MLAs in the 40-member Goa Assembly. The party also enjoys the support of two independent MLAs and one legislator from the Nationalist Congress Party.