Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Friday expressed jubilation over the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory at the national level as well as its performance in Goa, where it won both the seats by big margins.
“I am glad that what we achieved in Goa in State Assembly polls in March 2012 by getting full majority has been now replicated by BJP at the national level by winning 60 per cent seats,” he told the media at the BJP headquarters here. He was flanked by the victorious candidates — Sripad Naik, who won from North Goa, and advocate Narendra Sawaikar, the winner from South Goa.
“People have a lot of expectations from the new government and I am confident that a government under Narendra Modi will justify mandate of people,” the Chief Minister said, giving credit to Narendra Modi’s huge rally held here on January 12 for the victory in the State.
Taking on the Congress, he said that people had punished it for years of misrule, corruption, non-governance and utter policy paralysis. “The Congress is the biggest communal party and it suffered such a massive defeat across the country because it continued forcing a communal agenda on people in the name of secularism.”
Thanking all his coalition partners in Goa for the support, the Chief Minister pointed out that in South Goa his party won 48.5 per cent of the votes polled while in North Goa it was almost 54 per cent. “By this kind of massive voting for the party, the people have shown who is really secular and who really works for the people,” Mr. Parrikar said in a veiled response to a pre-election campaign by the Congress, which made the ‘secularism versus communalism’ question a part of its agenda after the Goa Church advised people to vote for secular parties.
