After 13 yrs, Kamat back ingovt, this time as a BJP min

Panaji: More than three decades after he first entered the Goa legislative assembly on a BJP ticket in 1994, Margao MLA Digambar Kamat will be sworn in as a BJP minister for the first time on Thursday.

Assembly speaker Ramesh Tawadkar, who will resign from his post on Thursday, will get a second stint in the BJP govt as he will also be inducted into chief minister Pramod Sawant’s cabinet.This is the second reshuffle of the Sawant govt and comes around a year and a half before the 2027 assembly election. Both Kamat and Tawadkar will be sworn in at noon on Thursday.It is a remarkable full circle for Kamat, the career politician, who has been a mainstay of contemporary Goan politics — chief minister of a Congress govt for a full term, leader of opposition, and undefeated MLA of Margao for over 30 years even as a generation of MLAs and ministers came and went.“I thank god for giving me an opportunity to serve the people of the state,” Kamat told TOI, while also thanking PM Modi, home minister Amit Shah, CM Sawant and other senior central and state BJP functionaries for “making this happen”.Kamat will replace law and environment minister Aleixo Sequeira who resigned from the cabinet on Wednesday, after serving as a minister for 22 months. Tawadkar will take the place of former art and culture and sports minister Govind Gaude who was dropped on June 18 from the cabinet for making serious allegations of corruption in the tribal welfare department, which comes under the chief minister.

Sequeira and Kamat, both former Congress MLAs, were among the eight who joined BJP in Sept 2022. In Nov 2023, Curchorem MLA Nilesh Cabral resigned from the cabinet to pave the way for Sequeira’s induction into the cabinet.Sequeira, in his resignation letter, said, “I am compelled to take this decision due to personal reasons”, clarifying that he hadn’t resigned on health grounds. Sequeira had undergone medical treatment in Delhi recently and was back in Goa for the monsoon session of the assembly.“There was no pressure on me to tender my resignation,” he said. “I will continue to be a member of BJP and there is no issue with the party. I have no complaints against Sawant. He gave me a lot of freedom.”Sawant later said that he accepted Sequeira’s resignation.In 1994, Kamat was one of the four MLAs who was first elected on a BJP ticket to the assembly and continued to serve as the party’s legislature party member till 2005, before he switched sides by pulling down Manohar Parrikar’s govt to pave the way for Congress to form a govt.Known as the second-in-command after Parrikar in BJP, he became a first-time minister in former chief minister Francisco Sardinha’s coalition govt, which was supported by BJP. Subsequently, Kamat was number two in Parrikar’s govt till he quit BJP in 2005. Kamat became the chief minister for the first time in 2007 and completed his term in office.Tawadkar, who was also a minister in Parrikar’s cabinet in 2012, had been denied a ticket by the party in 2017 assembly elections.

He later contested the assembly election as an independent and lost. In 2019, Tawadkar returned to BJP and was elected in the 2022 assembly election. Since then, he has been the speaker.“I have increased the sanctity of the speaker’s post and I am happy about it. I wanted to continue as a speaker. Sometimes the party wants our service for party work, and I am a soldier of the party. I am not bigger than the party. I have accepted the responsibility given by the party, so that my organisational skills can be used for party activities,” he said.Tawadkar was first elected in the 2005 by-election from Poinguinim. He was re-elected in 2007. After delimitation in 2012, he was elected from the Canacona constituency.