Margao: Former state Congress president Amit Patkar met Goa Forward Party (GFP) president Vijai Sardesai on Tuesday to request that he raise the issue of non-payment of salaries to staff of minority educational institutions in the upcoming assembly session. This despite Congress having three MLAs in the house, including the leader of the opposition.Patkar, when asked about the meeting, said he had also taken up the matter with Congress MLA Carlos Ferreira. He explained that he approached Sardesai because the GFP chief had raised a similar issue in previous assembly sessions, and that he had been asked by “the affected people” to take it up with him.The optics of the meeting have not gone unnoticed in political circles, coming close on the heels of the Sardesai-Patkar camaraderie witnessed at the anti-double-tracking protest in Velsao. Patkar’s decision to route an assembly issue through the opposition GFP, rather than through his own party’s leader of opposition, has fuelled speculation that it reflects his continuing unease with the Congress leadership under his successor Girish Chodankar.Patkar was recently named a member of the revamped political affairs committee — a move some in the party read as sidelining rather than elevation, given his earlier stint as GPCC president, which ended when he was replaced by Chodankar. Political observers suggest the latest overture to Sardesai could be read as a signal of Patkar’s discomfort with the current dispensation, and possibly an attempt to underline his continued relevance outside the party’s official channels.The development comes at a time when speculation is already rife over a possible political realignment ahead of the 2027 assembly polls, with the Congress-GFP alliance talks having stalled and the fate of the newly floated Goa Congress Party still uncertain.
