Goa Assembly polls: Denied ticket by BJP, former CM Laxmikant Parsekar to quit party

Panaji: Former Goa chief minister and senior BJP leader Laxmikant Parsekar, who was denied ticket by the party for the next month's state Assembly elections, on Saturday said he will resign from the ruling party.

Talking to PTI, the 65-year-old leader said he does not wish to remain in the party and will formally submit his resignation by this evening.

Parsekar currently heads the BJP's manifesto committee for the upcoming Goa elections and is also a member of the party's core committee.

The BJP has nominated sitting MLA Dayanand Sopte from the Mandrem Assembly segment, which Parsekar had represented between 2002 and 2017. Sopte had defeated Parsekar in the 2017 state polls as a Congress candidate but joined the ruling party in 2019 along with nine other leaders.

"As of now, I have decided to resign. What I should be doing next, would be decided later," Parsekar said.

He said that Sopte has been neglecting the original BJP workers in Mandrem, due to which there is large-scale resentment among them.

Parsekar was the chief minister of Goa between 2014 and 2017. He was selected to head the state after the then chief minister Manohar Parrikar was inducted into the Union cabinet as the Defence Minister.

The BJP has announced its first list of 34 candidates for the February 14 Goa Assembly elections. There are a total of 40 seats in the state.