Ex-Goa CM Luizinho Faleiro reaches Kolkata to join TMC

A day after quitting the Congress, former Goa chief minister Luizinho Faleiro on Tuesday arrived in Kolkata, where he is likely to join the Trinamool Congress, party sources said.

He was received at Dumdum airport by senior TMC leaders -- West Bengal minister Sujit Bose and Rajya Sabha MP Santanu Sen.

"Luizinho Faleiro arrived in Kolkata on Tuesday evening. He and his supporters will join the TMC on Wednesday," a senior party leader told PTI.

Faleiro was accompanied by a former Congress leader from Goa and he did not speak to reporters on arrival in the eastern metropolis.

Shortly before resigning as the MLA and primary membership of the Congress on Monday, Faleiro had said that the country needs a leader like West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee to counter Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Congress veteran, who was the chief of the campaign committee for the upcoming assembly elections, alleged that the party's Goa unit was run by a 'coterie of leaders who prioritise only self-interest'.

Addressing his resignation letter to All India Congress Committee president Sonia Gandhi, Faleiro, who represented Navelim assembly seat, described the Goa Congress unit as 'a cruel parody of what the Congress stands for'.

TMC Rajya Sabha leader Derek O'Brien, during his visit to Goa, had said that the party would contest the assembly polls due early next year, and they were in touch with several local leaders.

He had said that the party will announce its chief ministerial candidate soon.

In the 2017 assembly elections in Goa, Congress had bagged the highest number of seats at 17 in the 40-member House, restricting the Bharatiya Janata Party to 13, but it was outsmarted by the saffron party which formed a coalition government along with regional parties.