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Monserrate ‘best represents aspirations of people’: Goa BJP
The Goa BJP has justified the party’s decision to give the Panaji ticket in the upcoming Goa assembly polls to Atanasio “Babush” Monserrate while ignoring Utpal Parrikar, the son of former chief minister late Manohar Parrikar.
PANAJI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has justified the party’s decision to give the Panaji ticket in the upcoming Goa assembly polls to Atanasio “Babush” Monserrate while ignoring former chief minister Manohar Parrikar’s son Utpal Parrikar, saying they chose the former as the party believes in fielding a candidate “who can best represent the aspirations of the people.”
“He (Monserrate) has been actively engaged in social service for the people of the constituency for the past many years,” said the party in a notice issued by its general secretary in a local daily as is now mandatory as per directions of the Supreme Court.
“He was found to have a good understanding of the ground situation and shared a good rapport with the voters here,” the notice said.
Curiously, the party has claimed that Babush Monserrate is a “senior politician who has represented the constituency multiple times before” when in truth Monserrate’s current term as the legislator representing Panaji is his first as a representative of the state capital though he was selected from Taleigao and Santa Cruz constituencies before during his previous three terms as a legislator.
The party for the other candidates said: “There was no other person who could represent the voices of the people of the area and thus the present candidate was chosen”. Interestingly, this sentence was missing in the column for Monserrate.
On Friday, Parrikar’s son announced he was resigning from the BJP and will be contesting as an independent.
“The candidate given by the party.... I feel even embarrassed to talk about him. In Panaji, where the party has grown over 30 years, to give a ticket to someone with such a rap sheet, who joined two years ago, I had no choice. I have to go to the people,” Utpal told a news conference where he announced his candidature.
Manohar Parrikar represented the Panaji constituency since 1994 and until his death in 2019 barring a brief two-year period when he was union defence minister and a Rajya Sabha MP from Lucknow.
Monserrate is facing charges under sections 376 (rape), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as well as section 4 (penetrative sexual assault of a minor) of the POCSO Act in one case. He is also facing charges under sections 143,147, 148, 149, 153, 323, 324, 325, 333, 427, 435, etc (sections related to armed rioting) for leading a mob that violently attacked the Panaji Police station in 2008 and a third case under 326, 354, 504, 506, 509 (assaulting a woman), as he has declared.
The BJP has a total of seven candidates who have cases against them. Besides Monserrate, his wife Jennifer Monserrate, who is the BJP’s candidate from Taleigao constituency, too has criminal cases registered against her relating to assault on police station. Others with criminal cases include Rohan Khaunte, Govind Gaude, Krishna Salkar, Mauvin Godinho and Chandrakant Kavlekar. Besides Salkar, who is a new entrant into the BJP, Khaunte, Gaude, Godinho and Kavlekar have all been ministers for varying periods during the last five years of the BJP government.
Godinho and Kavlekar are facing charges of corruption that were filed during the tenure of the BJP-run governments when the duo were members of the Congress party.
