NT Reporter
Panaji
Ending the suspense over portfolio allocation, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant chose the auspicious day of Ganesh Chaturthi to do so – assigning three portfolios each to former chief minister Digambar Kamat and Canacona MLA Ramesh Tawadkar who were sworn in as ministers last week.
The Chief Minister also made minor changes to the portfolios of Ramkrishna ‘Sudin’ Dhavalikar and Subhash Phal Dessai.
Kamat, who is serving his seventh term as MLA of Margao constituency, has been allocated Public Works Department (PWD), Captain of Ports Department and Weights and Measures/Legal Metrology.
Tawadkar gets Sports & Youth Affairs, Art & Culture and Tribal Welfare.
PWD portfolio was with the Chief Minister since Nilesh Cabral resigned nearly two years ago. The ports portfolio was with Aleixo Sequeira before he resigned last week. Similarly, the Sports and Art and Culture portfolios were earlier with Govind Gaude, who was dropped from the ministry on June 18. Tribal Welfare was with the Chief Minister.
Only Art & Culture portfolio is new to Tawadkar. He was minister for Sports and Tribal Welfare in the cabinet headed by the then chief minister Manohar Parrikar and subsequently Laxmikant Parsekar, from 2012-2017.
After the last assembly election in 2022, in order to accommodate former non-BJP MLAs in the cabinet, Tawadkar was made speaker of the Goa Legislative Assembly reportedly with a promise that he would be inducted in the cabinet after two years. He took charge of his office in the Mantralaya two
days ago.
As first mentioned by this newspaper, Kamat did get PWD and Tawadkar Sports. However, the former didn’t get Art & Culture which has gone to the latter. As minister for Art & Culture, Kamat had gained goodwill in
the past.
Kamat had come out with new schemes for preserving traditional occupations, for artistes, craftsmen, and had initiated constructions of Ravindra Bhavans.
PWD, however, is a challenging portfolio now as he will have to deal with potholed roads. As the Chief Minister of Goa from 2007 to 2012, he had handled more than 20 portfolios himself. Kamat has become minister three years after joining the BJP and is back in the cabinet after 13 years. In the BJP cabinet, he makes a comeback after 20 years as it was in 2005 he had resigned from the Manohar Parrikar ministry leading to the BJP losing power a month later.
In his exercise of reshuffling portfolios of two of his ministerial colleagues, the Chief Minister has allocated the new department of Drinking Water to Subhash Phal Dessai in addition to the portfolios he holds. He, however, has been divested of Archives and Archaelogy which will now remain with Sawant. The other portfolios Phal Dessai has are: Social Welfare, River Navigation and Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities.
Similarly, Power Minister Ramkrishna ‘Sudin’ Dhavalikar has been relieved of Housing and instead given Museum and Gazetteer departments. Housing now will be vested with the Chief Minister.
A political analyst said that there could be a political angle behind this change. Housing was with Dhavalikar and his party’s MLA Jit Arolkar is the Chairman of Goa Housing Board. However, there have been major differences between the two with speculations that Arolkar has moved very close to the Chief Minister.
