After dragging his feet for two days Churchill Alemao quit the Congress party on Saturday morning in protest against the party's choice of one-time protege Aleixo Reginald Lourenco for the South Goa seat.
Churchill was demanding a ticket for his daughter Valanka, who heads the youth wing of the party in the state.
The development may hit the prospects of Reginald in South Goa in the event Churchill contests as an independent as he has announced he will.
This is the third time he has quit the Congress in his over two-decades long political career.
Way back in 1990, Churchill and the late Luis Proto Barbosa broke off from the party along with six other MLAs to form the PDF government, a coalition with MGP that died prematurely in just nine months.
He re-joined Congress in 1998 with two other UGDP MLAs in 1998 after he was left out of the equation in the short-lived Dr Wilfred de Souza-led GRC-MGP govt backed by the BJP. Churchill broke-off again before the 2007 Assembly elections and floated the Save Goa Front. After briefly honey-mooning with the Parrikar-led BJP in the failed, topple Digambar Kamat experiment, he rejoined Congress to become the PWD Minister under Kamat within six months of the elections.
Now, Churchill says, Goa needs a "Secular Leader" and not immature, non-experienced choice that the Congress has made in the South.