Goa Election: Ex-Ponda MLA Quits TMC, Alleges Party Trying To Divide Hindu And Christian Votes

Lavoo Mamledar, who resigned from TMC nearly three months after joining it, accused the Mamata Banerjee-led party of trying to divide Hindu and Christian votes.

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New Delhi: Goa’s former legislator Lavoo Mamledar on Friday resigned from Trinamool Congress, accusing it of being communal and trying to create a divide between Hindus and Christians for votes ahead of the state election.

The resignation comes nearly three months after he joined the Mamata Banerjee-led party, news agency PTI reported.

Lavoo Mamledar, a former Ponda MLA, had joined TMC in the last week of September. He was among the first few local leaders in Goa to join the party.

In a serious accusation, he has claimed that Trinamool Congress was collecting the data of people in the name of rolling out a welfare scheme for women in the state if it is voted to power after the elections.

After resigning from the party, Lavoo Mamledar said, “I had joined the TMC because I was fully impressed with Mamata Banerjee-led party’s performance in West Bengal (Assembly polls held earlier this year).”

“I was under the impression that TMC is a very secular party. But from whatever I have noticed in the last 15-20 days, I came to know that it is worse than the BJP,” he alleged, as quoted by PTI.

Deciding to contest all 40 seats in the Goa Assembly election, TMC has forged a pre-poll alliance with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), of which Lavoo Mamlatdar was an MLA between 2012 and 2017.

He accused the Mamata Banerjee-led party of trying to divide Hindu and Christian votes.

“As part of their pre-poll alliance, they want that the Christian votes should go to the TMC and Hindu votes to the MGP...The TMC is a communal party, which is trying to disturb the secular fabric,” he claimed.

He alleged that the TMC was trying to collect the data of people in the name of its Griha Laxmi scheme.

“We have found that under its Laxmi Bhandar scheme introduced in West Bengal, only Rs 500 are given, while here they are promising Rs 5,000 to women under the Griha Laxmi scheme, which is next to impossible. The promise of the scheme is entirely to collect data from Goa,” he said.

Goa is one of the states that TMC is trying to secure in its bid to expand the party’s influence among states going to polls early next year, as Mamata Banerjee also looks to position herself as the face of opposition ahead of general elections. 

In the 2017 Goa Assembly election, Congress had won 17 seats in the House and emerged as the single largest party. However, BJP, which had secured 13 seats, managed to quickly stitch alliances with some regional parties and independents to form government in the coastal state.

(With Agency Inputs)