PANAJI: Chief Minister Pramod Sawant has made a provision of Rs 10-crores in the budget to off-set expenditure to construct the ‘samadhi’ (memorial) of his predecessor Manohar Parrikar, who passed away on March 17 this year.
At the very outset of delivering his maiden budget speech, Sawant quoted a Bakibab Borkar verse to invoke the memory of Parrikar and praise his lifetime contribution to Goa before making the announcement that he has earmarked in the budget Rs 10-crores to build the memorial for him at Miramar.
Parrikar who battled pancreatic cancer died in office and was cremated in the square adjacent to the ‘samadhi’ of Goa’s first chief minister Dayanand Bandodkar. The area has been cordoned off and the government had then announced a memorial will be built there.
A series of political developments since his passing away, beginning with the unexplained denial of the BJP
nomination to his older son Utpal, to fight the Panaji bye-poll has given rise to criticism that the Sawant-led government and the current leadership of the saffron party is consciously trying to fade off Parrikar’s legacy.
On Wednesday, Independent legislator Rohan Khaunte, who was sacked from the cabinet by Sawant last week, had criticized the government for failing to even lay the foundation stone for the ‘samadhi’ and threatened to launch a campaign to raise funds from the public for it.
Sawant had however slammed Khaunte for his bid to politicise the issue. The former minister and the three other Goa Forward Party ministers sacked along with him - Vijai Sardessai, Vinoda Paliencar and Jayesh Salgaonkar - had also come under fire from the BJP for holding a political event at Parrikar’s cremation site at Miramar, the day they were
