Pramod Sawant takes oath as Goa CM for second consecutive term

Pramod Sawant. File pic

Pramod Sawant on Monday took oath as the Goa Chief Minister for the second consecutive term at Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Stadium.

The key attendees included Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President JP Nadda, Haryana CM ML Khattar and Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai. Vishwajeet Rane, Mauvin Godinho, Ravi Naik, Nilesh Cabral, Subhash Shirodkar, Rohan Khaunte, Atanasio Monserrate, and Govind Gaude also took oath as Ministers today. Before Sawant, Goa for the Bharatiya Janata Party had all been about the former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who had also served as Union Minister for Defence.

Sawant, 48, is widely known to have been the protege of Parrikar. Parrikar, a former IIT graduate, was the flag-bearer of the BJP in the coastal state for decades. Drafted in politics by Parrikar, Sawant steadily rose the ranks in the state unit of the BJP, and soon plunged into electoral politics. First, he unsuccessfully contested the by-elections in 2008 on the BJP ticket from the Pale Assembly seat.

He, however, lost to Congress' Pratap Gauns. Sawant stayed put, working in the shadow of Parrikar, and was back in the electoral fray in 2012 Assembly elections. He tasted success, and won from the Sanquelim Assembly constituency. The party entrusted him with the responsibility of the spokesperson. In the 2017 Assembly polls, Sawant repeated his electoral success, and was rewarded with elevation after he was elected to the Speaker of the Goa Assembly. Sawant, incidentally, was groomed by Parrikar with aims that he should helm the affairs of the BJP in the state as part of the strategy to help generational shift in the leadership.

After Parrikar's death following a prolonged battle with cancer in 2019, the BJP found Sawant ready to take the riegn of the state, becoming the Chief Minister. Beginning his journey as the Chief Minister after swearing-in as 13th Chief Minister of Goa on March 19, 2019, he made a mark in the BJP's Goa politics, stepping out of the shadow of the Parrikar and leading the party at a time when the aspirations of the senior leaders knew no limits.

His elevation to the top post in the coastal state followed hectic parleys between the BJP and its alliance partners. While Congress had emerge as the single largest party in 2017 Goa Assembly polls, Parrikar had cobbled up an alliance with the Goa Forward Party, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party and Independents to form the government. Sawant settled in the shadows of Parrikar to take the alliance partners onboard, providing political stability to the state.

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