Girish Chodankar to head Goa Congress

New Delhi, Aug 30 (UNI) Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi on Monday said Girish Chodankar will continue as the president of Goa state Congress and appointed Alexio Sequeira as the working president.

Ahead of 2022 Assembly elections in Goa, Sonia Gandhi also made appointments to different committees to prepare for the upcoming polls.
According to a statement, former Goa chief minister Digambar Kamat will continue as the leader of Congress legislative party in Goa.
The Congress president also appointed Luizinho Falerio as the chairperson and MK Shaikh as the convenor for the state election coordination committee.
Appointments were also made to the campaign committee, finance committee , manifesto committee and publicity committee in the state.
Congress is gearing up for assembly elections in Goa which will be held in 2022, after losing several MLAs to the BJP since 2017, when the last state elections were held.
Congress had won 17 seats in the 2017 Assembly polls, just four less than the majority mark of 21 while BJP had 13 MLAs.
However, BJP ended up forming a government in alliance with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and Goa Forward Party (GFP), after union minister Nitina Gadkari landed in Panjim within hours of the result and held negotiations.
Digvijaya Singh, who was given charge for negotiating for the government formation on Congress’ behalf, later blamed party leaders in the state for the outcome.
Congress leader Vishwajit Rane resigned from the party soon after and later joined the BJP.
The MGP, which had three MLAs, also lost two of them to the BJP.
In July 2019, in a dramatic shift, 10 out of 15 MLAs of Congress in Goa assembly, including Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, Chandrakant Kavlekar, joined the BJP, taking their strength up to 27 in the 40-member Assembly.
MGP has now announced it will not support the BJP in upcoming polls.