TMCs Goa poll campaign receives its first jolt, ex-MLA Mamledar resigns, accuses it of being communal and trying to divide Goan’s on religious lines

Lavoo Mamledar says TMC’s ‘Griha Laxmi scheme’ a mere pretext for data collection  

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Pune: Just as the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) was trying to make an entry into the Goa Assembly election scene, ex-Goa MLA Lavoo Mamledar on Friday resigned from the TMC while accusing it of being “communal” in nature and trying to divide “Goan’s on the basis of religion”. 

The former legislator from the Ponda Assembly constituency in South Goa, who left the TMC along with four others after inking a strongly worded letter to TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, later remarked that he thought of the West Bengal-based party “worse than the BJP”.  

Lavoo Mamledar had been first amongst the local leaders to join the TMC barley three months ago in September, along with former Chief Minister and now TMC’s Rajya Sabha MP Luizinho Faleiro.  

Speaking after tendering his resignation from the TMC, the former MLA remarked, “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.”

Mamledar had earlier been member of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), which is Goa’s oldest regional party with whom the TMC has forged an electoral alliance for the forthcoming Assembly elections. The MGP had expelled Mamledar in 2019 following his strained relationship with MGP leaders Sudin Dhavalikar and his brother Deepak. 

In his letter, Mamledar remarked that the TMC’s “move to polarize Hindu votes towards MGP and Catholic votes towards the AITC (All India Trinamool Congress) is purely communal in nature”. 

“We had joined the AITC in the hope that it would bring brighter days for Goa and Goan’s. But it is unfortunate to bring to your notice that AITC has not understood Goa and Goan’s.” 

The disenchanted former MLA levelled serious allegations against the TMC’s most ambitious poll assurance – the Goa ‘Griha Laxmi Scheme’ under which one woman of every family is receive Rs 5,000 every month. 

Mamledar accused that the scheme was merely an excuse for the TMC to collect data on citizens for the forthcoming elections on part of the company hired by the TMC. The TMC has claimed that the scheme has recorded one lakh registrations within just 12 days of its announcement. 

Mamledar’s letter observed that the TMC already had a similar scheme in West Bengal called the ‘Laxmi Bhandar’ scheme in which Rs. 500 was given to each woman from a family every month.  

The former MLA further alleged in his letter, “When the TMC government has failed to uplift women in West Bengal, we don’t think it would do any good to our Goan mothers and sisters…The company you have hired for your campaign in Goa is fooling Goan’s and they have not understood the pulse of Goa. This clearly indicates that in Goa the Griha Laxmi Scheme is nothing but a data collection for elections by the company you have hired as they don’t have any data on the ground.” 

The BJP and the Congress lost no time in pouncing on the TMC, with both parties alleging that Mamledar’s resignation had clearly exposed the TMC’s ‘communal agenda’ and its attempts to ‘fool the Goan’s’.   

Despite Mamledar’s exit, the TMC gained new members in the form of the incumbent Councilor of the Margao Municipal Council, Ghanashyam Shirodkar, who is said to be a close aide of senior Congressman and former Chief Minister Digambar Kamat. Shirodkar joined the TMC in the presence of Luizinho Faleiro.

Declining to comment specifically on the reasons for Mamledar’s exit, Faleiro merely said that the TMC was “a party with a mission and a vision” for Goa and that “the TMC poll bus would surge onwards towards its goal even if a few passengers (Mamledar) having deserted it.”