Giving the first hint that he would get the Defence portfolio in Sunday’s Union Cabinet reshuffle — as speculated — outgoing Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar said Saturday that bolstering India’s defence forces to put “fear” in the minds of those hostile to the country’s interests and discouraging them from engaging in any potential conflict would be top on his agenda in his new role.
Shortly after handing over his Goa charge to Laxmikant Parsekar and hours before taking off for Delhi, Parrikar told The Sunday Express that defence forces had to be strengthened to strengthen the country. Having held forth on this at some length, he abruptly clarified: “I don’t know which portfolio I am getting.”
Incidentally, the Goa Department of Information and Publicity too in a press release issued Saturday evening referred to Parrikar as defence minister-designate. The release announcing Laxmikant Parsekar’s swearing-in read, “Shri Parrikar, who was chief minister, demitted office today, after he was declared union defence minister-designate.” Within half an hour, after the mistake was brought to its attention by mediapersons, the department hastily issued another release, where the sentence was changed to, “…demitted office today, to take up his new assignment in New Delhi”.
“This is a great country,” Parrikar said. “You have to strengthen yourself in such a way that your opponent should feel fear to fight
against you. Peace is always maintained by people who are strong, it can never be maintained by weak people.”
Parrikar emphasised the need to improve defence procurement and production as well as training of armed forces, and said the country must stock up on superior equipment. “The list is long,” he said.
Reports of Parrikar taking over as the next defence minister have been doing the rounds for the last couple of days. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has been holding additional charge of the ministry since the Modi government came to power.
Ahead of Sunday’s revamp — the first of the Narendra Modi Cabinet, scheduled for 1.30 pm at Rashtrapati Bhavan — between 12 and 15 names were doing the rounds in Delhi. Apart from Parrikar, only Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi was being talked of as a possible new entrant at the Cabinet level. The other changes may involve a reshuffle of portfolios and elevation of some ministers of state. A couple of ministers could be dropped.
The revamp will factor in the BJP’s regional aspirations.
Before the swearing-in, Modi will host a breakfast for the newcomers in his ministry, giving them a pep talk.
BJP ally TDP has named Y S Chowdhary for induction, and the Rajya Sabha MP is expected to be made MoS. While the name of the Shiv Sena’s Anil Desai as MoS had also been circulating all day, it hit a bump in the evening as the Sena failed to get either an audience with Modi or an assurance from him to sort out ministry matters in Maharashtra. Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray summoned continued…
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