PANAJI
After over nine months of speculation and political churn about a change and reshuffle of Chief Minister Pramod Sawant's Cabinet, it finally appears the latter will deliver having made a second trip to the national capital this week.
Sawant again left for Delhi on Saturday evening, four days after he returned from the national capital attending a comprehensive meeting with the BJP's national leadership in the company of State president, Sadanand Tanavade.
Party sources said, political matters and decisions taken at that meeting with regard to a cabinet reshuffle and choosing a candidate to fill the Rajya Sabha vacancy with Vinay Tendulkar's term ending in July, will have to be given effect in the coming few days.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP national President J P Nadda and general secretary B L Santosh were part of the meeting Sawant and Tanavade attended. The party's preparedness for the all important 2024 Lok Sabha elections was also deliberated upon.
Sawant has reportedly been given the leeway to reshuffle portfolios among the ministers and also replace one or two from his current team.
The need for a rejig of his team, the source said, is a political compulsion Sawant is constrained by to accommodate two of the eight former Congress MLAs who switched allegiance to the saffron party in September last year -- former chief minister Digambar Kamat and Aleixo Sequeira.
Another MLA, Michael Lobo, was also part of the mass defection from the Congress to the BJP in September last year, but the Calangute MLA was reportedly not promised a ministerial berth then, the source said.
Over two decades of elected MLAs switching political allegiances in Goa has most often led to Cabinet positions to the politicians involved. This time cannot be an exception, the top BJP leader said.
Five of the eight defecting MLAs -- Kedar Naik, Delilah Lobo, Rajesh Phaldesai, Sankalp Amonkar and Rudof Fernandes -- have already been appointed chairpersons of State-owned corporations and autonomous bodies.
Efforts to contact Sawant to get an official confirmation of the reports of a Cabinet reshuffle did not fructify as calls to his cell phone continuously elicited a 'subscriber's phone is switched off' response through Sunday evening and late night.
Meanwhile, political circles are agog with anticipation to assess the impact if any on the equilibrium within the ruling party and between Sawant and his number two -- TCP Minister Vishwajit Rane.
