Caretaker Chief Ministers of Goa and Manipur Pramod Sawant and N Biren Singh respectively met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday amid indications that they may retain their posts in the states.
For his part, their Uttar Pradesh counterpart Yogi Adityanath, who is to take up the baton for the second time in the state, met Union Home Minister Amit Shah and also held meetings at the BJP headquarters to discuss the list of state ministers in the UP cabinet. Shah is the observer for UP. Unlike Manipur, Goa is witnessing a tussle between Sawant and former state minister Vishwajit Rane whose wife Deviya is also an MLA in Goa assembly. Rane, 50, is son of Pratap Singh Rane , a former Goa Chief Minister. Sawant, 48, seemingly, has a favourable backing from the central party leadership. "Our party is grateful to the people of Goa for blessing us yet again with the mandate to serve the state. We will keep working for Goa's progress in the times to come," Modi said after meeting Sawant.
Sawant was accompanied by the BJP Goa desk in-charge CT Ravi and state unit president Sadanand Shet Tanavade during the meeting with the Prime Minister. Modi also tweeted after meeting Manipur CM and congratulated him on the party's stupendous victory, asserting that it is committed to working even harder to fulfill the aspirations of the people of Manipur.
Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Narendra Singh Tomar have been named observers for Manipur and Goa respectively. Besides Goa and Manipur, BJP leadership has also to zero-in-on the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand where caretaker CM Pushkar Singh Dhami has lost his own election after leading the party to a second-successive run in the state. Union minister Rajnath singh and party MP Meenakshi Lekhi has been appointed observer for Uttarakhand.
Top BJP leaders, including Modi, Union ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh, and party president J P Nadda, have been holding consultations after March 6 to figure out the leadership in the states as also the formation of the respective council of ministers in four states.
The wearing-in-ceremony of new Chief Ministers is expected to take place after ‘ Holi’ that is on March 18. In UP, besides deputy-Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, there are 11 UP ministers who lost their assembly seats in UP polls.
According to sources, many of the ministers in the previous Yogi-government would find place in the new cabinet, sources said. Former Governor of Uttarakhand Baby Rani Maurya , an MLA from Agra and an influential backward class leader, is a strong contender for post of Deputy-Chief Ministership under Yogi Adityanath, they said.