Pramod Sawant to be Goa chief minister, elected leader of BJP legislature party

Mangalore Today News Network

Panaji, Mar 18, 2019 : 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, Hindustan Times reported.

 

 

The ruling BJP in Goa that 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.

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.