According to sources, the Goa Congress unit has not held a single meeting after it failed to reach the majority mark of 21 in the 40-member assembly.
The final will be held at the PJN Stadium in Margao, concluding the football league that started last November.
A day after the exit polls predicted a hung assembly in Goa, hectic political activities have begun in the state with the Congress focusing on keeping its flock together and plans to shift all its candidates to a resort, a senior party leader said on Tuesday.
Congress veteran P Chidambaram held a meeting with the Goa assembly poll candidates of his party and those of ally Goa Forward Party on Wednesday night, where it was decided that the alliance will name its leader immediately after the election results are out and stake claim for government formation, sources said.
Asserting that there is a silent wave in his favour, Utpal Parrikar, elder son of late Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar, who is contesting the February 14 Assembly election as an independent candidate from the Panaji seat, has said he was a favoured choice after his father's death in 2019, but was denied poll ticket by the Bharatiya Janata Party due to local politics.
He also said that although India got independence much before Goa became free, people of the country could not enjoy at that time as they felt uneasy thinking that one part was the country was still under foreign rule.
Police on Thursday filed chargesheet in the Louis Berger pay-off scandal naming former Goa chief minister Kamat as the "prime conspirator".
Former chief minister of Goa and Congress veteran Luizinho Faleiro, resigned as an MLA and a primary member of the party on Monday claiming the state party unit is run by a 'coterie' of leaders even as he praised Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee saying the country needs a leader like her to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
While 'family politics' is one of the major issues in the upcoming Goa legislative assembly polls, a young couple here is perhaps an exception, as both of them are rooting for rival political parties.
A Goa court on Wednesday acquitted 40 accused, including senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, in the first ever case of communal riots in the state, which had occurred in the twin towns of Curchorem-Sanvordem in 2006. The sessions court at Margao acquitted 40 accused including BJP general secretary Satish Dhond and senior leader Sharmad Raiturcar. The accused had been charged with unlawful assembly, mischief and criminal trespass.
The five vacancies in Goa -- Taleigao, Cambarjua, Benaulim, Margao and Poinguinim -- have been caused following the resignation of incumbent members of Legislative Assembly in the month-long political drama.
It is a record that the saffron party has created, where the majority of its legislators belonged to the minority community.
Outgoing Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat has said the ruling Congress would have done better in the assembly polls if he had been projected as the party's face for the top post. The picture in Goa, where the Bharatiya Janata Party is set to form the new government, would have been different if the March 3 elections had been fought completely under his leadership, he told reporters at Margao. "Elections were not completely fought under my leadership," Kamat said.
John, who surrendered before the Crime Branch on Wednesday after absconding for almost a month, was produced before the Judicial Magistrate Margao who remanded him in police custody, a police officer said.
Goa Minister Dipak Dhavalikar's wife Lata has waded into controversy after she asked parents not to send their children to convent schools even as she urged women to desist from aping western culture, saying it has led to rise in incidents of rape.
Former Public Works Department Minister Churchill Alemao has been arrested in connection with the Louis Berger bribery case by Goa police which is closing in on former chief minister Digambar Kamat and preparing to oppose his anticipatory bail plea.
Goa's Rural Development Minister Fransisco Miccky Pacheco, whose conviction for assaulting a government servant was upheld by the Supreme Court, resigned from the cabinet on Friday saying he did not want to cause further embarrassment to the BJP-led government in the state.
Mounting a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi on Friday said the demonetisation drive launched by him was "firebombing of 99 per cent honest people" and not a "surgical strike".
