Goa chief minister Manohar Gopalakrishna Prabhu Parrikar died on Sunday in the midst of his fourth term in office. The 63-year-old widower, also former defence minister of India, is survived by two sons and a grandchild. His death leaves India’s smallest state with a coalition government under considerable strain.
Parrikar had quit as Union defence minister in January last year to return as chief minister of India’s smallest state to hold together the ruling coalition after its constituents refused to accept anyone else as its leader. That he stayed on in the job despite his deteriorating health, reflected his indispensability to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In the past two decades, as far as Goa was concerned, Parrikar was the BJP and vice versa. But while the state saw a degree of political stability when he was at the helm, Parrikar was destined never to complete a full term as chief minister. His first term, which began in October 2000, lasted 16 months and the second, from June 2002, was for two years and eight months. He began his third in 2012, having led the BJP to its biggest ever victory, giving it a majority on its own for the first time.
Parrikar even declared that it would be his last term as chief minister and as an elected representative. “I want to live the last 10 years of my life for me. I have given enough back to the state. No matter what the pressure from the party, I will not be contesting or be part of active elections after this term,” he told a media channel. “Nothing grows in the shade of a banyan tree,” he added, conscious perhaps of his stature overshadowing others.
In another two years, he would however be drafted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to become the country’s defence minister, forcing Parrikar to leave his beloved Goa. Born to a Goud Saraswat Brahmin family in Mapusa, Parrikar was introduced to the Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh (RSS) at an early age. After graduating with a degree in metallurgy from the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, he set up a pneumatic pump making unit in Goa.
It was in the 1980s that the BJP got serious about establishing itself in Goa, which had mostly been governed since liberation from the Portuguese in 1961 by the Maharastrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), which represented the interests of the majority Bahujan community. The BJP asked the RSS to lend it the services of some of its cadres. Among them were Parrikar and Laxmikant Parsekar, the latter defying his MGP-loyal family.
When the BJP decided to contest assembly elections in 1989, Parrikar was still splitting his time between business and party work. The BJP got 0.8% of the vote. Parrikar’s political acumen and organisational skills are credited with taking the party to power in about a decade.
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