Mumbai, August 13
Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat of the Congress has received a big boost after allies and small parties that switched sides to join hands with the BJP have started showing signs of return.

Controversial MLA from the United Goans Democratic Party Atnasio Babush Monserrate, who attempted to prop up leader of the opposition and BJP leader Manihar Parikar barely a month after the Congress won the assembly poll, is now backing the government.

Monserrate today met Governor S.C. Jamir and handed over a letter of support to the Kamat government.

Sources close to the chief minister told The Tribune that attempts were being made bring in Churchill Alemao of the Save Goa Front into the government as well.

“However negotiations are still on into the demands put up by Alemao,” a source told the reporter. The Kamat government barely survived a confidence vote after speaker Pratapsinh Rane prevented two MLAs from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party from voting in the confidence vote last month.

Both MLAs have challenged the decision in the Supreme Court.

The fate of another Congress MLA Victoria Fernandes, who turned in her resignation from the assembly, thereby sparking off the crisis, is not known.

Kamat today told reporters in Panjim that more MLAs who backed the abortive coup against his government were returning.

Monserrate had earlier supported the hastily cobbled Goa Democratic Alliance (GDA) headed by the BJP.

Today, he said he was withdrawing support to the GDA.

Sources say the speaker may now accept the resignation of Victoria Fernandes from the assembly. However, the party may give its Santa Cruz assembly seat ticket to Jennifer Monserrate, wife of Atnasio Monserrate, as part of a new deal.

According to the sources, the Congress was holding the threat of dissolution of the assembly to shore up support for Kamat.

Last month, Jamir in his report had advised the dissolution of the assembly on grounds that no political grouping was in a position to provide a stable government due to the fractured nature of the assembly.

New Delhi, August 13
In another spat between legislature and judiciary on their powers, Goa Assembly Speaker Pratapsingh Rane today defied the Supreme Court notice on petitions by three MLAs allegedly debarred by him from voting in the trust vote by Chief Minister Digambar Kamat on July 30.

Rane in a two-page communication sent to a Bench, headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan in reply to its August 6 notice, raised questions over the court’s jurisdiction to entertain a petition on challenging his powers within the House.

“Out of deference of hon’ble court’s order of August 6, without accepting service of the notice or without accepting the jurisdiction of the court to determine the matter arising within the House, I would only like to state that the allegations in petitions were actuated by bias or that I had passed the order mala fide,” Rane said.

He further said the allegations levelled by the three MLAs, including two of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, against him were denied. The order passed by him in their case was not “perverse, unreasonable and capricious,” Rane claimed.

He said he “reserves the right to file the affidavit if so desired at a later state.”

Kamat has also submitted a reply giving details on the political events.

The court deferred the hearing for August 17 after Rane and Kamat’s counsel Fali Nariman and Harish Salve, respectively, informed the court that the Speaker today recorded the statements of the three MLAs, who by an interim order of July 30 were restrained from voting in the trust motion and deferred the case for August 16.

Petitioners’ counsel Mukul Rohtagi and Arun Jaitely wanted the hearing to take place today as they said the Speaker’s ex-parte interim order was “perverse and mala fide” as there is no provision in the Constitution for such a provision when there was an application before him for disqualification of an MLA.

“The Speaker has to first issue a notice to the MLA and then record his statement and then only any decision could be taken by him. Interim ex-parte order by a Speaker on disqualification application was unheard of,” they contended.

As Nariman and Salve said parallel proceedings by the Speaker and the court could not go on the same issue, Mr Justice R.V. Raveendran adjourned the hearing for August 17 hoping by then Speaker’s final order will be known.