Pramod Sawant, the Goa Assembly’s 45-year-old Speaker, will be the coastal state’s next Chief Minister, a BJP leader said on Monday evening after its allies finally agreed to cede the top seat to the BJP. Sawant was elected leader of the BJP legislature party at a meeting in the presence of party boss Amit Shah and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari.
The ruling BJP in Goa has been struggling to arrive at a consensus over Manohar Parrikar’s successor on Monday after the 63-year-old died last evening at his Panaji house.
Pramod Sawant had emerged as a frontrunner to succeed Parrikar after BJP MLAs demanded that the next chief minister should be from among them and not from the alliance partners.
Watch: Remembering Manohar Parrikar and the void he leaves behind in Goa and India
With the BJP senior leadership including then Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar and Minister Rajendra Arlekar losing the 2017 assembly polls, Speaker Pramod Sawant is the only remaining ‘full-blooded’ BJP leader in the Assembly.
First Published:
Mar 18, 2019 19:11 IST
Source: HindustanTimes