PARRIKAR STOPS SHORT OF LANDING A KILLER PUNCH AT CONGRESS

PANJIM: State BJP leader Manohar Parrikar seems to share the predicament of party stalwart L K Advani when it comes to stopping short of landing a killer punch on the Congress.  Advani last week apologized and distanced himself from the claims of a party task force, which suggested that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had money stashed in foreign bank accounts.

The situation could seem somewhat familiar to the politically savvy in Goa where Parrikar, who heads the BJP's good governance cell, has failed to pin the responsibility of the illegal mining scourge on Congress CM Digambar Kamat, who is also the state's minister for mines.

Parrikar has instead vigorously accused a police inspector and other mines department officials for the plunder.

When BJP's secretary in charge of the Goa desk Arti Mehra was asked-shortly after she took over the organizational position-to comment on why the party leaders in the state had failed to make the scam taint stick on local Congress leaders, she first said the issue would be looked into.

"I discussed it with my leaders here and they say the local media is not naming the ruling politicians in their reports even when our leaders are exposing scams," she said during a later interaction.

Very few people have been able to clinically dissect the scams in Goa's mining sector better than Parrikar, who has proven that nearly 18% of the 40-million-tonne ore exported from the state was illegally extracted. But he hasn't gunned for Kamat.

He has also been reluctant to name the CM (also the state's finance minister), in a multi-million rupee excise scam, wherein consignments carrying millions of litres of alcohol have disappeared.

He, instead, chose to zero in on a state civil service officer and excise commissioner Sandip Jacques for the scam. Excise Commissioner Sandip Jacques for the scam. Jacques is now posted as an officer on special duty to the CM.

Parrikar's silence on a panel of municipal corporators backed by education minister Atanasio Monserrate is telling. While the BJP leader has voiced the alleged corrupt practices of the ruling corporators in the Corporation of the City of Panjim (CCP), he has rarely dragged Monserrate into the controversy.

Said a senior BJP leader, "The cadre is confused. Parrikar's inability to take on the battle to these ruling MLAs in their bastions, despite our repeated exposes in the ministries run by these people is sending wrong signals to our cadre."