Calangute: Former Saligao MLA and GFP minister in the Manohar Parrikar-led cabinet Jayesh Salgaonkar resigned from the BJP on Friday.
“I am announcing that I have resigned from the primary membership of BJP and also from all the party positions I was appointed to,” Salgaonkar said at a press conference. He said he was doing so at the request of his supporters. A number of former panchayat leaders and temple committee office-bearers were present at the press briefing.
Salgaonkar declined to state which political party he would join to contest the forthcoming assembly elections. He said he would go by what his supporters told him to do.
He said he could not be called a defector as he had resigned before joining the BJP ahead of the last assembly polls. Salgaonkar contested the last assembly election on a BJP ticket. The seat was won by the Congress, but its MLA Kedar Naik, along with seven others, joined the BJP in September 2022.
Salgaonkar said that at one point, he had been under pressure to quit the GFP. He claimed that one of the offers he had received was to become deputy chief minister.
Salgaonkar had won the Saligao constituency on a Goa Forward Party (GFP) ticket in 2017 and, along with party chief Vijai Sardesai and then Siolim MLA Vinod Palienkar, was a minister in the BJP-led coalition ministry. In July 2019, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant dropped them from the cabinet after 10 Congress MLAs joined the BJP.
Meanwhile, reacting to the development, Congress leader from Saligao constituency Tulio D’Souza said there was no place for defectors in the Congress.
