PANAJI:
Santa Cruz MLA Antonio (Tony) Fernandes, who was one of the ten Congress MLAs who defected to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party last month has been appointed chairman of the Goa Khadi and Village Industries Board, making him the third from the group of ten accommodated with office.
Tony replaces the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party's (MGP) senior leader Narayan Sawant, who had been appointed the GKVIB chief in February earlier this year by the coalition government led by the late Manohar Parrikar.
Apart from the Santa Cruz MLA, two other members of the 10-member Congress group of legislators who switched sides in mid-July, were also appointed or elected to office - Canacona's Isidore Fernandes as Deputy Speaker and Tivim's Nilkanth Halarnkar as chairman of Goa Infotech Corporation.
With three other MLAs of the group of 10 made ministers - Deputy Chief Minister Chandrakant Kavlekar, WRD Minister Filipe Neri Rodrigues and Revenue Minister Jennifer Monserrate - it leaves four other MLAs of the group including Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate, Francis Silveira, Wilfred D'Sa and Clafasio Dias still without any position in the government.
Veteran legislator Subhash Shirodkar, who had quit as MLA and the Congress in October last year to contest and win a byelection as a BJP candidate from Shiroda in May, is the only other MLA of the ruling BJP who has not got any appointment yet.
Chairmanships of the three PDAs of Greater Panaji, North Goa and South Goa, besides of the State-owned Goa Handicrafts and Rural Small Scale Industries Development Corporation are vacant in which the Chief Minister Pramod Sawant-led government is expected to accommodate the MLAs without any office yet.
