Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar yesterday promised to “speak less and work more,” and said the Congress Party would soon become a “rare species” on the canvas of Indian politics.
Addressing a rally here, Parrikar also said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could come to power in the coastal state only because of the party’s central leadership and the lacklustre abilities of the Congress leadership.
The rally was organised here to felicitate him for giving up the Defence Ministry for his latest chief ministerial stint and BJP president Amit Shah for forming the government in four states after assembly elections in five states earlier this year.
“One thing I learned in Delhi is to speak less and work more. This time I have decided to speak less. Whatever work we do, people will see for themselves,” Parrikar said, adding that performance would be the benchmark of his governance.
During his stint as defence minister, Parrikar often courted controversy for his comments.
“We have to think as to why we dropped from 21 to 13 (MLAs). We are lucky that the party’s central leadership was behind us. They gave us full support and to our luck, the person who the Congress had sent here, was more interested in being a tourist rather than in government formation,” the chief minister said.
Parrikar said the Congress was on its way to becoming an extinct species and that the party would also lose the state assembly polls in Karnataka, which are scheduled for next year.
“The Congress is like a rare species. Like the wild species which the forest department tracks down when it is on its way to becoming extinct. It (Congress) is there in Karnataka, but next year it will disappear from there too, I know,” Parrikar said.
Meanwhile, federal minister Nitin Gadkari said the BJP did not do anything illegal to form a government in Goa, and revealed some of the behind-the-scenes aggressive manoeuvering, which enabled the party, which was short of majority, to clinch power.
He also said that the real architect of the coalition government formation process was Amit Shah.
Gadkari explained how Shah worked the phone to good effect with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and key members of the BJP’s highest decision-making body, the party’s parliamentary board, which triggered a series of developments leading to the BJP eventually cobbling together a coalition government.
One of the obstacles, he said, was the reluctance of two Independent MLAs, whose co-operation was required to reach the majority mark of 21. To counter this, he revealed that a message was sent across to their camp that ministerial berths were being allotted to others.
“They had delayed. The Independent MLAs did not come. I said make others ministers,” he said, adding that once the Independent MLAs got the message, they themselves called and expressed willingness to join the BJP camp.