BJP to Cong to BJP: After a Detour for Months, Goa's Richest Legislator Michael Lobo Does 'Ghar Wapsi'
By: Rohini Swamy
Last Updated: September 14, 2022, 19:10 IST
Bangalore, India
Michael Lobo and his wife Delilah are the richest legislator couple in Goa with assets worth more than Rs 90 crore each. (Twitter)
After having defected from the BJP to the Congress just before the assembly elections earlier this year, the MLA from Calangute is back in the BJP, this time, along with seven other MLAs, including former chief minister Digambar Kamat
- Follow us:
For Michael Vincent Lobo, one of Goa's richest legislators and a successful businessman, it is "ghar wapsi" time.
After defecting from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the Congress just before the assembly elections earlier this year, the MLA from Calangute is back in the BJP, this time, along with seven other MLAs, including former chief minister Digambar Kamat.
Having started his career in the early 2000s as a young Congress worker, he was identified by BJP leader and MLA Dilip Parulekar. Lobo, who prides himself on being one of "Manohar Parrikar's handpicked boys", is one of the leading men who orchestrated the defections from the Congress to the BJP in July, which were thwarted.
Sources in the BJP told News18 that the talks with the ruling party in Goa – the BJP – have been on for several months, but the timing had to be right.
Lobo, considered a strongman of Goa's Bardez taluka, is a three-time MLA. Along with his wife Delilah, he severed his 15-year-old ties with the BJP to defect to the Congress, after she was apparently denied a ticket from Siolim by the BJP.
Although Lobo had denied this when this reporter met him during the Goa election campaign, he defended his wife saying she had been a sarpanch of Parra Panchayat for five years and worked hard for people.
ALSO READ | Goa: Congress Sacks Michael Lobo as Leader of Oppn For 'Hatching Defections With BJP'
"There were people who say that I left because my wife was denied a ticket. We both left the BJP as it was no longer the BJP that Manohar Parrikar had built and the future that he had envisioned," he told News18 earlier this year.
JULY JOLT
Then came the jolt in July, when the news of defection by a group of Congressmen began doing the rounds, with Lobo and Kamat being the names on top of the list. Lobo denied any such move at the time, but the Congress knew their time with Lobo was up when he did not turn up for the press conference called by Goa in-charge Dinesh Gundu Rao to show their unity, amid speculations of defections. Lobo and Kamat were conspicuous by their absence and Rao had told News 18 that the conspiracy to "finish the Congress" was led by Lobo, who was the leader of opposition at the time.
"Michael Lobo and Digambar Kamat have been conspiring against the party and hobnobbing with the BJP to ensure a split in the Goa Congress and finish the opposition in Goa. They hatched a conspiracy to ensure the Congress party in Goa is weakened and engineered the defections. But they can't break us. We will rise like a phoenix again," Rao had said.
Lobo was among the 36 Congress candidates in Goa who stood before the deity at Goa's Mahalaxmi temple and took a pledge to remain loyal to the Congress.
comment 0 Comments
more_vert