Trinamul extracted revenge from the Nationalist Congress Party on Monday by poaching the only NCP legislator in the outgoing Goa Assembly days after the NCP chief Sharad Pawar made it clear to Mamata Banerjee that no Opposition coalition could be possible without the Congress.

Letters were submitted by Trinamul’s Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien as well as Churchill Alemao informing Goa Speaker Rajesh Patnekar (BJP) about the sole NCP legislator’s decision to merge the legislative unit with the All India Trinamul Congress.

“I am the only member of the Nationalist Congress Party in the Goa Assembly. I thus constitute no less than two-thirds of the members of the legislative group of NCP in the Goa Legislative Assembly,” Alemao wrote in his letter to the Speaker.

The resolution deciding the merger was passed on December 9.

Since Alemao was the only MLA of his party, the anti-defection law would not be applicable in his case.

“It has been so hard to prove that five to six of our MLAs in Bengal have joined the Trinamul in Bengal. Even a seasoned politician like Sharad Pawar will not be able to prove that less than two-third of one person was in favour of the decision,” quipped a BJP MLA from Bengal.

The "acquisition" for the Trinamul in Goa, which had earlier bagged the former chief minister Luizinho Faleiro happened while Mamata is on a three-day visit to the poll-bound state.

While the Trinamul will go into the polls with one MLA, which gives it an advantage over Aam Aadmi Party, the other political party eyeing the Opposition space in India’s smallest state, the move will definitely add to the chinks in the Opposition armour.

Buoyed by her victory in the Bengal Assembly polls, Mamata who has never hidden the facts that she harbours national ambitions, having served the Union cabinet in alliance with both the BJP and the Congress, the Trinamul has been taking rapid strides across the length and breadth of the country, poaching mostly Congress leaders like Sushmita Dev and former Haryana Congress president Ashok Tanwar.

Trinamul Congress was in talks with several smaller parties in Goa to stitch together an alliance, though none of it materialised. Goa Forward Party leader Vijay Sardesai met Congress MP Rahul Gandhi earlier this month and announced support to the Congress in the upcoming Assembly polls.