PANAJI
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant took oath of office and secrecy before Goa Governor P S Sreedharan Pillai at a ceremony held on Monday morning at the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee stadium, Bambolim.
Eight other ministers, all MLAs of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), also took oath in the same ceremony.
Vishwajit Rane, Mauvin Godinho, Ravi Naik, Nilesh Cabral, Subhash Shirodkar, Rohan Khaunte, Govind Gaude and Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate were the eight BJP MLAs who were appointed ministers and took oath of office and secrecy, simultaneously with Sawant.
The ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP national president, J P Nadda and several other top leaders of the ruling party.
Interestingly, MGP leader Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar and Independent Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco, who were billed to be inducted into the Cabinet, did not find favour and Sawant pushed the decision of filling three more slots in his Cabinet to a later date.
The induction of Dhavalikar, said to be favoured by the BJP High Command, has faced stiff opposition from local leaders and some party functionaries.
Five of the eight ministers sworn-in on Monday, meanwhile, were former Congressmen and could be a reason for some consternation among the saffron party's cadre.
Of these five, four including Vishwajit Rane, Mauvin Godinho, Ravi Naik, Subhash Shirodkar and Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate, joined the saffron party at different intervals during the previous term of the legislative Assembly.
Godinho is the only one among them to have joined the BJP and got elected on its ticket first in the 2017 elections, while Shirodkar had contested a bye-election in 2019 on BJP ticket after he quit his membership mid-term to switch over from the Congress.
Meanwhile, Sawant who took guard at the State Secretariat's CMO again in the afternoon, took the 'Swayampurna Goa' slogan he often voiced in the run-up to the elections, into governance in his second innings.
Calling it 'Swayampurna 2.0' Sawant said, generating jobs both in government and public sector besides restarting mining would be the top priorities for his government.
"With a double engine government, the mission of Swayampurna (self-dependent) Goa will be taken to next phase under the Atmanirbhar Bharat vision of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Centre," Sawant said.
"More than my own priorities, what are Goa's priorities is more important and need to be focussed on," Sawant said in his first comments after taking charge.
He said, fulfilling all the promises the BJP made in its election manifesto will be worked on urgently and added that his government will work to make Goa the country's tourism capital by enhancing infrastructure and taking up projects in the PPP mode with emphasis on medical and hinterland tourism.
