Goa Assembly polls: Ex-CM Laxmikant Parsekar to quit BJP today, will contest as independent candidate

Panaji (Goa) [India], January 22 (ANI): After being denied a ticket for the upcoming Goa Assembly polls, former Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Laxmikant Parsekar on Saturday said he would resign from the ruling party and contest as an independent candidate.
Speaking to ANI, Parsekar said, "I was an honest BJP worker. Whatever development work I did was done from public money and not from my pocket. But today, those development works are pending. I feel it is my responsibility to do that. If they are not completed then the grief of wasting public money will remain in my mind. So, to complete that development work, I do not have to join the party in the government. I do not even have to be a minister or a chief minister. I can also complete those development works as an MLA."
Parsekar said he has been a member of the BJP for years but the party took him for granted.
"The development work I have done in the last five years has been deliberately put on hold. Its grief is in my mind. That development work must be completed. So, I am going to resign from BJP this evening and am going to contest the election as an independent candidate. Devendra Fadnavis, BJP election in-charge of Goa, also met me yesterday to appease me. But I am firm in my decision. I am not resigning just because Dayanand Sopte was given the ticket but there are many reasons. This decision was not made overnight. It is a decision made in the last 3-4 years," he emphasized.
Parsekar said that he maintains a close relationship with former Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrrikar's son Utpal Parrikar. However, he avoided speaking about BJP not giving a ticket to Utpal Parrikar saying it is an internal matter of the party. "But I will not talk about it being an internal matter of the party," he said.
Parsekar is the chief of BJP's manifesto committee for the upcoming Goa Legislative Assembly election and was also a member of the party's Core Committee. BJP has nominated sitting MLA Dayanand Sopte from Mandrem Assembly seat for upcoming Goa elections.
Sopte had defeated Parsekar in the 2017 Assembly polls on Congress ticket but later joined BJP in the year 2019 along with nine other members.
BJP on Thursday released its first list of 34 candidates for the upcoming Goa assembly election.
Goa will go to the assembly polls on February 14. The counting of votes will take place on March 10. (ANI)