TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The 58-year old Arambol local, Laximikant Parsekar, a teacher by profession, was the principal of the Harmal Panchakroshi secondary school when he became an MLA defeating veteran politician Ramakant Khalap by a wafer thin margin of 750 votes.
The only son, Parsekar is also married to a school teacher who is the headmistress of the Harmal Panchkroshi school (High School), Arambol and has two children – a boy and a girl, both in college and two sisters. His mother too lives with him.
Though his family was strongly with the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, Parsekar postgraduate in science, started out as an RSS volunteer in Pernem taluka.
He started off with the BJP in late 1980s and was one of the original handful along with Manohar Parrikar, Rajendra Arlekar, Sripad Naik who built up the party in the state.
He contested his first election in 1988 from Mandrem constituency as the BJP candidate against the wishes of his family and lost miserably to Ramakant Khalap. BJP was then a virtual non-entity in the state and his standing for elections was received with shock by his family and the village then a traditional MGP stronghold.
According to Parsekar his entire family rooted for the MGP and even one of the trucks used by the MGP candidate for campaigning was owned by his father. He lost the 1999 Assembly polls too.
However, again he contested the Assembly election in 2002 and after defeating MGP’s Khalap by 750 votes in 2007 he managed to double his margin. He was re-elected in 2012.
