Another Jolt To BJP In Goa; Former CM Laxmikant Parsekar Quits After Being Denied Ticket

The BJP has nominated sitting MLA Dayanand Sopte from the Mandrem Assembly segment, which Laxmikant Parsekar had represented between 2002 and 2017.

Panaji: Days after Utpal Parrikar, son of former union minister Manohar Parrikar resigned from BJP after being denied a ticket to fight Goa Assembly Election 2022, another senior leader and former Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar has also quit the saffron party. Parsekar, who was also denied ticket by the party for the next month’s state Assembly elections, on Saturday said he will submit his resignation letter to the ruling party by the end of the day.

The 65-year-old leader currently heads the BJP’s manifesto committee for the upcoming Goa elections and is also a member of the party’s core committee. The BJP has nominated sitting MLA Dayanand Sopte from the Mandrem Assembly segment, which Parsekar had represented between 2002 and 2017. He was Chief Minister of the coastal state between 2014 and 2017 , during the time late Manohar Parrikar had to take over as India’s Defence Minister.

Sopte had defeated Parsekar in the 2017 state polls as a Congress candidate, but joined the ruling party in 2019 along with nine other leaders.

“As of now, I have decided to resign. What I should be doing next, would be decided later…,” Parsekar said, he told news agency PTI.

Parsekar also claimed that Sopte has been neglecting the original BJP workers in Mandrem, due to which there is large-scale resentment among them. Parsekar was the chief minister of Goa between 2014 and 2017. He was selected to head the state after the then chief minister Manohar Parrikar was inducted into the Union cabinet as the Defence Minister.

The BJP has announced its first list of 34 candidates for the February 14 Goa Assembly elections. There are total 40 seats in the state.

Also raising the banner of revolt within the party are Goa’s Public Works Department Minister Deepak Pauskar, Deputy Speaker of the Goa Legislative Assembly and incumbent MLA from Canacona, Isidore Fernandes, and Savitri Kavlekar, wife of Goa Deputy Chief Minister Chandrakant Kavlekar, who resigned from the post of Goa BJP’s women’s wing’s vice-president. Kavlekar has announced she will contest the upcoming polls as an independent MLA from Sanguem.

Goa will go to the assembly polls on February 14. The counting of votes will take place on March 10.

(With inputs from ANI and PTI)