Panaji, May 20 :    Panaji, May 20:  The Congress in Goa has come under fire from party members for its choice of candidates for the May 30 Assembly elections. Nearly one out of every three nominees for the 40-seat House is a politician who has defected and jumped parties, often, more than once. Both former chief minister Francisco Sardinha and the man till a fortnight back the BJP deputy chief minister, Ravi Naik, have been allotted tickets, causing dismay among a number of Congress supporters here. Similarly, the former number 3 in the BJP Cabinet, Ramakant Khalap, is now the Congress candidate from Mandrem constituency. While the Congress went about nominating 'winnable' candidates, the Delhi-appointed party observers, headed by R. Chennithala, have faced flak for allegedly doling out tickets to controversial and corrupt individuals. Tickets were reportedly available to aspirants willing to cough up lakhs of rupees. 'I couldn't carry on in the race for a ticket simply because I didn't have the money to keep on fighting,' said disappointed Congressman Sushruta Martins. Martins, a homeopath and son of freedom fighter J.F. Martins, had been hoping for the Panaji ticket. In a show of strength, the Congress also kept its former chief minister Wilfred de Souza, now a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader, hanging fire till the eleventh hour before ditching him over plans for a possible Congress-NCP alliance. This is expected to divide its support base further, especially from among the minority voters. As of now, Christians and Muslims put together form nearly one-third of the vote base that would get split between the Congress, the Wilfred de Souza-dominated NCP and the United Goans Democratic Party. Former long-time Congress chief minister and ex-Speaker Pratapsinh Rane, who had a hand in the BJP government's survival in Goa, is now actively canvassing for the Congress. Rane never left the Congress, but his flagrant bias for the BJP enabled it to continue in power. Rane's son Vishwajeet held a plum post in the Goa Tourism Development Corporation till recently. Of late, however, Rane has been heard lambasting the BJP. He lashed out against chief minister Manohar Parrikar over the burning of the Soccoro mosque and demanded that the names of the culprits be revealed. 'The chief minister has hatched a conspiracy to instigate communal violence before Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's visit,' Rane alleged. Parrikar, on the other hand, alleged that police were inquiring into reports suggesting that some Congress leaders were 'creating' communal tension in the state prior to Sonia's visit on May 23. For the past several weeks, the Congress image has been receiving a boost in Goa. With the violence in Gujarat showing no signs of abating, several senior BJP politicians had defected back to the Congress to avoid a backlash from minority voters. But the Congress seems to have frittered away the advantage and landed itself on slippery ground by opting for defection-prone candidates. It may be recalled that the BJP, which won just 10 seats in the June 1999 elections, had ruled Goa for 16 months, a regime that was propped up by defectors mainly from the Congress. Prior to that, for a year the BJP ruled Goa by proxy by getting a long-time Congressman to rebel and run a government dependent on BJP support.