Goa will finally have a full-fledged Governor by way of PS Sreedharan Pillai. It has been a long wait of almost 11 months but hopefully it will be worth it. As expected the new Governor may be a BJP man but is intellectually very sound. Governor Pillai from being a student activist went on to be a very successful advocate and has been a prolific writer. He has all the legal acumen and a good academic background to do justice to the Governor’s role.
Being in Power the BJP has its discretion who to appoint as Governors but they should look at merit and not transform Raj Bhavans into retirement homes for the aged party cadres.
Anthony Lancelot Dias from the Civil Service was the first Goan to be appointed as Governor in West Bengal from 1971 to 1979. Former Chief of the Army Staff Sunith Francis Rodrigues was the second having been the Governor of Punjab from 2004 to 2010. If the BJP was keen to appoint someone from Goa couldn’t it find a distinguished Goan amongst its flock that could have matched the credentials of the earlier two Goan Governors?
The Goa Assembly elections are ensuing and as Rajendra Arlekar had made known his intentions to contest, to avoid turbulence on the political turf the BJP could have accommodated him in some other position. Did the Governor’s cap fit him? And was Goa so intellectually bankrupt that the BJP couldn’t send an academically worthy representative to the Rajya Sabha?
In the last over two decades Goa has seen some very outstanding Governors by way of Lt Gen. J.F.R. Jacob, Dr. S.S.Sidhu, Mr. B.V. Wanchoo and more recently the formidable Mr. Satya Pal Malik, while we have also witnessed and had to put up with some from the other end of the spectrum of whom less said the better.
Let us hope our new Governor, PS Sreedharan Pillai will usher the much needed ray of hope for Goa and Goans by being very pro-active in the discharge of his duties and responsibilities as the Constitutional head of our State which today sadly finds itself at crossroads with bad governance and demonstrative paralysis on all fronts.
