The appointment of two officials tainted in the New Delhi Commonwealth Games scam as members of the lusofonia Games organising committee has brought out in the open a vertical split in the ranks of the BJP with a senior BJP leader quitting from the board.
North Goa MP Shripad Naik, who shares stature in Goa’s BJP circles with Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, has resigned as being a member of the committee, saying he felt ‘suffocated’ in the board. Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is the chairman of the same board.
The lusofonia Games, the Portuguese version the Commonwealth Games, is scheduled to be held in Goa this year with the BJP Government racing against time to put in place infrastructure in time for the Games. “I can tell you that there was a lot of suffocation for us. It was not healthy being a part of the lusofonia team, which is why I resigned. I will come clean with the exact reasons soon,” Naik, a member of Parliament in North Goa, said.
However, sources close to the MP conceded that there were differences in the style of functioning of the Chief Minister. “The appointment of these two officials are a U-Turn as far as our Government’s policy zero tolerance to corruption,” a Naik supporter said using a term coined together by the Congress-led Opposition to refer to Chief Minister’s apparent change of heart on various issues after coming to power.
The Chief Minister has been accused to doing a volte face on several key policy issues like mining, education, which have been called ‘u-turns’.
Two CWG officials Rajkumar Sancheti and VV Saxena who were under probe in the infamous CWG infrastructure scam along with their boss and Indian Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Suresh Kalmadi, who have been appointed advisors of the lusofonia Games organising committee. The lusofonia Games will witness the participation of around 13 countries that were once ruled by the Portuguese colonialists.
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is yet to react to the developments, but director of sports Elvis Gomes said that the names of Sancheti and Saxena had been forwarded by the CWG committee and were not choices of the Goa government.
