Lagatar24 Desk
Panaji, March 22: Pramod Sawant will take the oath of office as Goa chief minister for the second time on March 28. Nearly ten days after the election results in the coastal state, where the BJP won 20 of the 40 seats, the BJP announced on Monday that he will stay in his position. In this round of assembly elections, Goa was the only state where the BJP won a second term but not a majority. The BJP won seats comfortably above the halfway mark in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Manipur.
Notably, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, Goa’s oldest political party, has rejoined the BJP after opposing Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in the state elections. On Tuesday, Sawant presented Governor PS Sreedharan Pillai with letters of support from the MGP, which frequently plays the role of kingmaker, and three other independent MLAs from the state.
This was also the first Goa assembly elections for the BJP since the death of former Union Minister Manohar Parrikar, who was involved in the state’s electoral strategy.