In a cryptic warning to the BJP high command, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Goa state Cabinet minister Vishwajit Rane on Tuesday, 8 March, put out a photo with Congress leader DK Shivakumar.
The controversial photograph comes in light of Rane allegedly eyeing the chief ministerial post in the state, and his long-standing speculated tussle with Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.
As per most exit poll projections for the state of Goa, Congress and BJP are predicted to be locked in a neck-and-neck battle in the 2022 Assembly polls, with no single party emerging as a clear winner.
In this backdrop, local state media conjectures that Rane's post may foreshadow a departure from BJP, especially after the leader's sudden resignation from the Congress in 2017.
Meanwhile, Tuesday's controversy was sparked on the same day that Goa CM Sawant met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, informing him that the BJP will get a "full majority".
Before the meeting, Sawant iterated, “I had not met the PM after the election, so I am meeting him just to discuss how the election was. There are exit polls coming, what our surveys say, to give him a detailed idea of what can happen, about government formation… We are fully confident that the BJP will get a full majority and form the government. If we fall short of a seat or two, there are independents who can win and support us."
The results for 40 Assembly seats in Goa, (in)famous for horse-trading and turncoat MLAs will be declared on 10 March.
(With inputs from ANI.)
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