With tendency for 'U-turns', can Parrikar help PM Modi as defence minister?

Panaji: Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is locally at loggerheads with the Indian Navy and the Indian Army units over issues related to land-hogging by the armed forces wings, may just have the last laugh yet. The 58-year-old qualified metallurgist from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is now tipped to the India’s next defence minister, the seniormost ministerial position any Goan politician has ever risen to. Last week Parrikar returned from Delhi, where he met a series of Union cabinet ministers to resolve state related issues. The trip did not raise any eyebrows, but his sudden summoning on Wednesday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah, along with the state president Vinay Tendulkar and organising secretary Satish Dhond has set the tongues wagging both in New Delhi as well as Goa. [caption id=“attachment_1789707” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar. PTI[/caption] BJP state vice president Wilfred Mesquita was eloquent in his usage of Shakespeare when asked to respond to reports that Parrikar would have to quit chief ministership and head the country’s defence portfolio. “Parting is such a sweet sorrow,” Mesquita told Firstpost. Facebook too has been agog with comments about the development. “It is a matter of pride for us Goans, irrespective of our political affiliations, that our own has been elevated to the position of defence minister of India. It’s a really big deal,” says Victor Savio Braganca on Goa+ a popular group with nearly 60,000 members. Some like Samir Talkar believe that Parrikar’s excellent administrative skills will hold him in good stead. But others are more skeptical about Parrikar’s abilities especially his penchant for U-Turns on local governance issues, which have cast a shadow of doubt over Parrikar’s much touted abilities. The chief minister’s track record in his most recent stint as chief minister (he has served as chief minister twice before in 2000 and 2002) has been chaotic and marked with almost spectacular and embarrassing reversals on key issues like mining, tourism, casinos, land resource management, etc as a result of which the party has had to face flak both from an aware citizenry as well as the media. “Parrikar himself was lobbying for a cabinet position because he has made a mess of affairs in Goa. Whether it’s his inability to resolve the mining problem, law and order, etc. The defence portfolio is his escape ticket from Goa,” Congress Rajya Sabha MP from Goa Shantaram Naik claims. Parrikar’s is the country’s first IIT alumnus to become chief minister in 2000. He is now currently in his third stint as chief minister. Goa’s tallest BJP leader, the 58-year-old Parrikar, has always been seen as a promising leader within the party. But it is ambition streak promise as well as his indisciplined and untimely comments which have been his undoing, especially at critical junctures in his career in the recent past. In 2009, Parrikar was in the running for the party’s national president position, when the controversy sparked by his likening of BJP stalwart LK Advani to “rancid pickle” during an interview to a local cable news channel put paid to his dreams. In the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Parrikar appeared to be gentling maneuvering himself into a position of a consensus candidate for prime ministership. Tell-tale signs of this emerged on the social media, where his fans started a group ‘Manohar Parrikar for Prime Minister’. Among other signs of his fatal flaw combo of ambition and a loose tongue and was his interview on The New York Times’ online India edition ‘India Ink’, where he said that he would have done a better job at handling the riots which occurred in Gujarat in 2002, post the train-burning incident at Godhra. In the eventual scheme of things, the Goa chief minister was forced to play bridesmaid to Modi, announcing the Gujarat chief minister as the man to lead the BJP for the 2014 general elections. However, if and when Parrikar does make it defence minister, the logical question that arises is who will replace the man in Goa, who is almost synonymous with the BJP. Mesquita believes there is plenty of talent and adds: “We will have to go in alphabetical order as far as his replacements go”. Party sources, however, said that the names of current deputy chief minister Francis D’Souza and Speaker Rajendra Arlekar are in the reckoning for the chief minister’s position should Parrikar’s elevation to the central cabinet happen.