Manohar Parrikar

Manohar Parrikar Biography

Manohar Gopalkrishna Prabhu Parrikar is an Indian politician from the Bharatiya Janata Party who has been Chief Minister of Goa since 14 March 2017 till his death.  Previously he was Chief Minister from 2000 to 2005 and from 2012 to 2014.

In November 2014, Parrikar was chosen as the Minister of Defence replacing Arun Jaitley, who, till then, held the additional charge of the Ministry.

He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the first chief minister of Goa belonging to the same party. He is the first IIT graduate to become the Chief Minister of any Indian state. He was awarded by IIT Mumbai with the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2001. In 2012, he received CNN-IBN Indian of the Year in politics category. He is married to Medha Parrikar and has two children.

 
His full name is Manohar Gopalkrishna Prabhu Parrikar. He was born on 13 December 1955 at Mapusa, Goa. He studied at Loyola High School, Margao and became a graduate in metallurgical engineering from IIT Bombay in 1978. Manohar Parrikar and Nandan Nilekani belonged to the same group of IIT graduates. He was first elected to the Second Legislative Assembly of the State of Goa in 1994. He served as the leader of Opposition till from June to November 1999. He became the Chief Minister of Goa on 24 October 2000 and served the position till 27 February 2002. On 5 June 2002, he was re-elected to the Chief Minister again.

 
On 29 January 2005, following the resignation of 4 BJP MLAs, his government was under threat. Parrikar had to prove majority, which he eventually win it. In 2007 general Assembly elections, BJP party was defeated by Indian National Congress. In March 2012 elections, he restored his Chief Minister position.  After the 2017 assembly elections, the Bharatiya Jananta Party decided to let Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar return to Goa as CM if that’s the only way they could form the government there. 

He died from pancreatic cancer on 17 March 2019.

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Updated: March 17, 2019