Goa elections: Former chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar resigns from BJP

PANAJI: Goa's former chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar resigned from the primary membership of the party on Saturday.
Parsekar snapped his ties with the party after 32 years, three days after he was denied the party’s candidature for Mandrem. BJP has announced its sitting MLA Dayanand Sopte as its candidate.
“After giving it proper thought and with a heavy heart, I have taken this decision today.I never thought I would be left in such a position. In the interest of Mandrem constituency and Pernem taluka, the future of youth and overall development, I have split from the party,” Parsekar said, adding he also resigned as the convener of the party’s manifesto committee.
“This would be my last election and I neither want to become chief minister nor minister. I want to become MLA to get pending works done in the constituency, in which the government has invested, by fighting it out in the assembly. Within the next two days, I will take a decision whether to contest the assembly election as an independent candidate,” Parsekar said.
Parsekar had played a crucial role as the BJP state president in 2012, when the party had managed to form the government with majority.
But in 2017, when he was the chief minister, he lost the assembly election by a margin of 7,000 votes to Sopte, who later quit Congress and got re-elected as Mandrem MLA on a BJP ticket.
Over the past few days, BJP left no stone unturned to convince Parsekar not to quit the party and work towards ensuring its victory in Mandrem.