Satya Pal Malik's graft claims: Chorus grows for Goa CM's sacking
Panaji/New Delhi: Opposition parties on Tuesday demanded that Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant be sacked after former governor Satya Pal Malik accused the state government of corruption during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Congress demanded a time-bound investigation under the supervision of a sitting Supreme Court judge into the charges and filing of a case against Sawant by various Central agencies including the ED, CBI and SFO.
Senior Congress leaders said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should come out and answer why no action was initiated against the chief minister when the governor (Malik) had informed him about the "corruption" by the state government.
In Goa, where Assembly elections are a few months away, a delegation of Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders led by Lok Sabha member Saugata Roy and including former Union Minister Babul Supriyo and the party's vice president Luizinho Faleiro met Governor P S Sridharan Pillai and requested him to immediately seek resignation from the chief minister and announce investigation by an independent agency.
The TMC also demanded a white paper on the government purchases and expenditures during the pandemic.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) demanded the resignation of Sawant while the Goa Forward Party demanded that he be sacked.
While Sawant has not yet commented on the claims made by Malik, which provided ammunition to Opposition parties ahead of Goa polls, the BJP has dismissed the allegations.
There was corruption in everything the Goa government did (during the COVID-19 pandemic). I was removed for my allegation of corruption against the Goa government, Malik, now the governor of Meghalaya, alleged in a TV interview. He also termed the Goa government's initiative to distribute ration at people's doorsteps as "impractical", alleging that it was launched on the "insistence of a company that paid money to the government."
In Delhi, Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala and AICC Goa in-charge Dinesh Gundurao demanded that the Modi government dismiss Pramod Sawant from the post. They said Malik, incumbent Governor of Meghalaya and ex-governor of Goa (Oct 2019 August 2020) and Jammu and Kashmir (August 2018 to October 2019), accepted what the Congress has been saying that there was corruption in everything Goa government was handling.
