Panaji, April 13 (IANS) Top office bearers of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Goa on Monday claimed they “did not know” their newly-appointed state president Suhas Volvoikar, and accused the party’s high command of foisting a leader unknown to the state leadership.
Addressing a joint press conference here, with over a dozen members of the NCP’s state executive committee, party general secretary Jose Philip D’Souza also said that if party supremo Sharad Pawar and other central leaders like Praful Patel did not revert the decision in seven days, they may have to face a rebellion in the ranks.
“This is completely unfair. How can you appoint a state president who no one knows. I can say that many of us have not even met him before. The new president is not even a primary member of the NCP,” said D’Souza, a former state NCP president.
The appointment of Suhas Volvoikar over the weekend by the NCP top brass has led to unrest in the state NCP unit, with the party’s senior vice-president Trajano D’Mello giving an ultimatum to the party’s top brass to sack Volvoikar and appoint a new state president.
“If the top brass does not resolve the problem in seven days, then we will be forced to act on our own,” D’Mello said.
Secretary of the state NCP Bryan Pegado told reporters that much of the onus for appointing Volvoikar lay on the party’s observer for Goa Bharat Jadhav, who interviewed a series of state NCP leaders last month vis-a-vis the appointment of the state president.
“This executive committee is rejecting the appointment outright,” Pegado said.
While Volvoikar, an unknown commodity in the state’s political arena, has not commented sources close to him said that the new state president would make his position clear by addressing his first media briefing on Tuesday.
The NCP had been unable to find a replacement for its earlier state president Nilkanth Halarnkar, who resigned from the position in February this year.
Party sources said that over the last three years, ever since the party lost power in the state legislative elections, the NCP had been unable to raise sufficient funds and running the outfit would result in a financial strain on whoever headed the state unit.
When asked about the financial crisis within the state unit, D’Souza, who was offered the state presidentship in March, said: “There are some money issues. But they are within the party domain and I cannot discuss them in the media.”