Goans need to shun negativity and be positive, says Parrikar

Panaji, Jan 27 (IANS) In his first speech in months, ailing Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar urged Goans to develop a "positive mentality", while also urging residents of the state to shed opposition to all and everything.

"There is opposition for everything. This mentality has developed. Goans should be positive now. This is my message today," Parrikar said at a function organised for inauguration of a third bridge across the Mandovi river named "Atal Setu" at the hands of Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari.

Parrikar also said that he was aware of negative comments on Facebook, especially vis-a-vis the signature cable-stayed bridge and while urging people to be positive.

"With who's money is the bridge being built? Whose money is it? It is not my money. It is your money, people's money," Parrikar said.

Urging people to be positive has been a constant refrain from Parrikar ever since he became Chief Minister in 2012.

Parrikar also said that Nitin Gadkari was his "hero", thanks to the latter's execution of the Golden Quadrilateral project, when he was a Union Minister in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The ailing Chief Minister also picked a popular dialogue from the superhit film "Uri", based on the armed forces' "surgical strikes", to address the audience with the words: "How is the josh?"

Parrikar's words were: "How is the josh? How is the josh? I will transfer my josh to you and sit here and speak a few words."

The popular dialogue has been quoted by several Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, since the release of the Vicky Kaushal-starring film. Parrikar was the Defence Minister when the surgical strikes were conducted along the Indo-Pak border in 2016.

Underlining the importance of roads in the development of a region, Parrikar, who is suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer and has been unable to attend office consistently for nearly 11 months now, also quoted former US President the late John F. Kennedy.

"After I became CM for the first time, I had a quote of John F Kennedy before me. 'America's roads are not good because America is rich. But America is rich because roads are good.' This sentence had impacted me when I was a child," Parrikar said.