Cabinet Ministers….
Vishwajit Rane
Mauvin Godinho
Ravi NaikNilesh Cabral
Subash Shirodkar
Rohan Khaunte
Govind Gaude
Atanasio Monseratte
Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pramod Sawant today took oath as the Chief Minister of Goa for the second consecutive term.
Governor PS Sreedharan Pillai administered the oath of office and secrecy at an event organised at Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Stadium in Taleigao.
In addition to CM, 8 Council of Ministers, all of w
hom are BJP MLAs, were sworn in by the Governor and CM Sawant.
Vishwajeet Rane, Mauvin Godinho, Ravi Naik, Nilesh Cabral, Subhash Shirodkar, Rohan Khaunte, Govind Gaude and Babush Monserrate were sworn in as Ministers.
The MGP, who had extended support to BJP to form the govt, failed to get a cabinet berth in the first round. The growing opposition within BJP to MGP could be the reason for ignoring Sudin Dhavalikar in the first list sources reveal.
The event was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, and others.
BJP national president JP Nadda and Chief Ministers of several BJP-ruled states, including Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana), Shivraj Singh Chauhan (Madhya Pradesh), Pushkar Singh Dhami (Uttarakhand) and others also attended the ceremony.
CM Sawant, Rohan and Govind took the oath in Konkani while Subhash, Ravi took the oath of office in Hindi and Vishwajeet, Mauvin, Nilesh, and Monserrate took the oath in English.
This, notably, was the second time that Goa’s chief minister has taken an oath outside the Raj Bhavan premises.
In 2012, Manohar Parrikar was sworn in as the CM at Campal ground in Panaji after the BJP emerged as the single largest party in the House.
Sawant had won the Sanquelim constituency by a narrow margin of 666 votes.
There had been speculations about the BJP’s choice for the chief minister post since the election results were declared on March 10. Party MLA and former Health Minister Vishwajit Rane had met the Governor three days after the results. However, Rane had described the meeting as a “personal visit”.
In the recently concluded Goa Assembly polls, the BJP had emerged as the single largest party, winning 20 seats in the 40-member state Assembly and reducing Congress to 11 seats.
The BJP, however, fell one seat short of the majority figure but retained power in the state after three independent MLAs and two legislators of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) extended support.
