Panaji: Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said denying Utpal Parrikar candidature from Panaji was not akin to dishonouring former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and if the junior Parrikar was really a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker, he should have accepted the alternative that the party offered him.
Speaking to ThePrint, Sawant said the BJP decided to give the candidature for the Panaji seat — a BJP bastion cultivated by the late Manohar Parrikar — to sitting MLA Atanasio Monserratte because of his winnability factor.
Sawant said, “It is not so (dishonouring Parrikar’s legacy). Utpal Parrikar was given the offer from three different seats to contest the election. He is asking only for the Panaji seat. This decision was also taken by the central leadership. At present Monseratte is the sitting MLA of Panaji and the winnability is also with him”.
“So if we are continuing with Monserrate and we are asking Utpal Parrikar to contest from another seat, and if he is a leader, a karyakarta of the BJP, then he should contest from the other seats”, he added.
The 14 February elections will be the first assembly polls that the BJP will contest in Goa since former Union defence minister Parrikar’s death in 2019, and his son Utpal Parrikar had requested to be allowed to contest from Panaji.
The party has instead given the seat to sitting MLA, Monserratte, who had won as a Congress candidate in a bypoll when Parrikar died after a long illness in 2019. Monserratte later defected to the BJP the same year. Utpal is now contesting the Panaji seat as an independent candidate.
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“For us it is party first, for Lobo it was wife first”
The BJP’s decisions on nominating candidates to the 40-member assembly sparked an internal rebellion of sorts with several leaders, including some old-timers, having resigned from the party to contest as independents. This includes Michael Lobo, who was a minister in the Sawant government, former CM Laxmikant Parsekar, and deputy CM Chandrakant Kavlekar’s wife, Savitri Kavlekar.
Sawant shrugged off the string of resignations saying, “Michael Lobo left the party because the ticket was not given to his wife. The party goes by nation first, party second and then we. Michael Lobo is a ‘wife first’ leader. That’s why he left the party.”
“Laxmikant Parsekar didn’t get a ticket. The central party is talking to him. He only wants the Mandrem ticket, that’s why he has left. Our central leadership has taken all these decisions,” Sawant said.
As CM, Sawant has also faced internal strife and issues with Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, who joined the BJP from the Congress in 2017. The conflict was evident during the second wave of the Covid pandemic.
Speaking to ThePrint, Sawant downplayed talks of any conflict with Rane. “I don’t have any conflict with any of my ministers”, he told ThePrint.
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“Confident of getting majority on our own”
In 2017, the BJP came to power in Goa despite the Congress being the single-largest party with 17 seats out of 40. The BJP cobbled together an alliance with regional outfits, Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and Goa Forward Party (GFP) to form a coalition government.
It gradually bolstered its position in the government by getting 12 Congress MLAs and two MGP MLAs to defect to the BJP, and dropped MGP and GFP leaders from plum posts in the government, edging them out.
While the opposition Congress has criticised the BJP of stealing their mandate and engineering defections, Sawant said this charge will not impact the BJP’s prospects in the upcoming polls.
Sawant, an MLA from Sanquelim, said, “Still in the last three years, we gave good governance, we did infrastructure projects, our double engine sarkar has done very well in the state of Goa, so this time we will get a full majority only with the BJP.”
“We will get 22 plus seats and we are coming to power once again,” he added.
Sawant said political defections have been common in Goa historically because it is a small state where people tend to put their trust in a candidate more than in a party.
“This time we are asking the people of Goa to give their vote for a party to form the government, so definitely this time people will vote for the party to form the government and not only for the MLA,” he said.
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“Everyone compares me with Manohar Parrikar”
Sawant, 48, took charge as CM in March 2019 after former CM Manohar Parrikar died following a prolonged battle with pancreatic cancer.
At the time, there were many aspirants for the CM’s post, including Vishwajit Rane, but what made Sawant the most popular choice was that like Parrikar, he too is a thoroughbred Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) man, who has grown within the BJP can see. He is a two-time legislator from Sanquelim in North Goa and was elected as Goa assembly speaker in 2017.
Sawant said, when he took charge everyone started comparing him with Parrikar.
“Everyone had started to compare me with Manohar Parrikar. It is not possible to compare with him. But, we are still continuing the legacy of Manohar Parrikar,” he said.
“The last three years I’ve been going through a very difficult phase due to Covid, then the Tauktae cyclone, then the flood. But still, we have managed very well,” he added.
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(Edited by: Manoj Ramachandran)