KOLKATA: Former Goa chief minister and seven-time Congress MLA Luizinho Faleiro on Wednesday joined the TMC in Kolkata along with nine others, including four Congress functionaries, a former MLA from MGP and a Sahitya Academy Award winner.
The mega induction ahead of the assembly elections slated to be held next year in Goa took place in presence of TMC’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee who announced that the Bengal’s ruling party would contest alone in the assembly election in the west coast state.
When asked about an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party in Goa, Banerjee said, “In Goa, TMC is going to fight by itself. Hope this puts a rest to all speculations.” Pointing out that the TMC is emerging as the BJP’s main opposition, the second-in-command in Bengal’s ruling party said, “Our fight is against the BJP, not the Congress.
The difference between Congress and TMC is that we have been defeating the BJP for the past seven years. Congress can’t be sitting idle. They have to hit the streets. We will not be cowed down and we will take the BJP head on.”
Faleiro tendered his resignation two days ago. “My political journey began 40 years ago from the western part of the state and now it has reached the coastal area in the east,” he said after joining the TMC. The former Goa CM arrived Kolkata on Tuesday and before joining the ruling party, he held an hour-long meeting with chief minister Mamata Banerjee at Nabanna, the state secretariat.
Other than Faleiro, former MGP MLA Lavoo Mamledar, two Congress general secretaries Yatish Naik and Vijay Vasudev Poi, two Congress secretaries Mario Pinto De Santana and Anand Naik, Sahitya Academy Award winner Shivdas Sonu Naik, former state youth wing vice president of Congress Rabindranath Falerio, environmentalist Rajemdra Shivdaji Kakodkar and prominent lawyer Antonio Monterio Clovis Da Costa joined the TMC.