The Goa unit Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Vinay Tendulkar claimed on Wednesday that 10 Congress MLAs had approached them to merge their legislative unit, but it was rejected.
Mr. Tendulkar dismissed as “baseless” the allegations made by Goa Congress president Girish Chodankar that between “money and ministership” were offered to these MLAs.
“From our side, we do not want to destabilise any party. The 23 MLAs we have are enough to run the party. Earlier, 10 Congress MLAs had come to merge the party with the BJP. But the Central leadership rejected the plan. We clearly said no,” Mr. Tendulkar told the press.
He said there was a nation-wide trend of Congressmen joining the BJP, because they believe that the BJP is going to be in power for the next 25 years.
Mr. Tendulkar also said when two Congress MLAs Subhash Shirodkar and Dayanand Sopte joined his party last year, there was no financial exchange. It is the Congress which had the habit of giving money to MLAs to defect, not BJP, he added.