PANJIM: A day after he was sworn-in as Chief Minister for the fourth time, Manohar Parrikar took charge of the State on Wednesday morning.
According to sources, Parrikar reached the Secretariat Block early morning, took charge and held a few meetings with bureaucrats. Officials said he has begun preparations for the State Budget to be presented later this month.
Goa voted a hung House in the recently concluded Assembly elections, with the Congress getting the most seats (17 in the 40-member Assembly), but BJP, which finished second with 13 seats, overtook the Congress in forming an alliance.
Parrikar acknowledged his party’s below-par performance in Goa in the five-state elections that saw the BJP registering landslide victories in Uttarakhand and the battleground state of UP. “The loss of many ministers in Goa indicates that there was something wrong in the governance in the past two and half years, let me identify that aspect,” Parrikar said after taking charge.
The former Defence Minister also expressed confidence that he will be able to prove his majority on the floor of the House on Thursday. “The number is very clear. So, I don’t see any reason that there has to be any apprehension,” he said.
The trust vote was ordered by the Supreme Court after Congress complained that the Governor had broken the law by not inviting the single-largest party to form the government.
