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Manohar Parrikar

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Manohar Parrikar

Manohar Gopalkrishna Prabhu Parrikar (13 December 1955 – 17 March 2019) was an Indian politician and a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party who served as the eighth Chief Minister of Goa, going on to serve a total of four times between 2000 and 2019. He also served as the Union Minister of Defence from 2014 to 2017. In 2020, he was posthumously awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award, by the Government of India.

Parrikar proposed Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate at the 2013 BJP parliamentary elections convention in Goa. He then served in the National Democratic Alliance government under Prime Minister Modi as Defence Minister of India from 2014 to 2017. He was a member of the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh from 2014 to 2017.

He was the first IIT alumnus to serve as MLA of an Indian state, the first IITian to become the Chief Minister of a state in India, the first Goan to become a cabinet-rank minister at the Centre, and also the first Chief Minister of a state to continue in office for over a year despite being diagnosed with terminal-stage cancer.

Manohar Gopalkrishna Prabhu Parrikar was born on 13 December 1955, to the Gaud Saraswat Brahmin (GSB) family of Gopal Krishna Parrikar and Radhabai Parrikar in Mapuçá, Portuguese Goa. He studied at Loyola High School in Margao. Parrikar completed his Secondary School Certificate at G. S. Amonkar Vidya Mandir, Mapusa, which was previously known as New Goa High School. He completed his primary education in Marathi and went on to graduate in Metallurgical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay), in 1978. He was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by IIT Bombay in 2001.

Parrikar served as Chief Minister of Goa, holding the office four times (from 2000 to 2005, 2012 to 2014, and lastly from 2017 to 2019). He also served as the Union Minister of Defence from October 2014 to March 2017.

Parrikar joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) at a young age and became a mukhya shikshak (chief instructor) in the final years of his schooling. After graduating from IIT, he resumed RSS work in Mapusa while maintaining a private business, and became a sanghchalak (local director) at the age of 26.[citation needed] He was active in the RSS's North Goa unit, becoming a key organiser of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. He was seconded by RSS to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with the objective of fighting the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party. He is sometimes described as having been a pracharak of the RSS.

As a member of the BJP, Parrikar was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Goa in 1994. He was leader of the opposition from June to November 1999. He successfully contested the election to become Chief Minister of Goa for the first time on 24 October 2000, but his tenure lasted only until 27 February 2002. In 2001, the Parrikar government had turned over fifty-one government primary schools in rural areas to Vidya Bharati, the educational wing of the Hindu nationalist group Sangh Parivar, inviting criticism from certain educationists.

On 5 June 2002, he was re-elected and served another term as Chief Minister. On 29 January 2005, his government was reduced to a minority in the Assembly after four BJP MLAs resigned from the House. Pratapsing Rane of the Indian National Congress would subsequently replace Parrikar as Chief Minister.[citation needed]

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