Goa CM confesses bribing a tout 38 years ago

Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar on Thursday confessed to have bribed a tout once in the North Goa District Collectorate for obtaining a certified document before he became an elected representative, and said that even after 38 years of pursuit, he had been unable to obtain the document.

"Let me confess I was badly in need of that document. I am persistent and I had decided I would source it from this person only. I did not keep track of how much I must have paid to him," Parsekar said, while speaking at a function organised to launch an SMS-based mutation facilitation service in Panaji.

The chief minister said that he was tracking down a 1978 certified copy of a tenancy order from the office of the Deputy Collector and despite running from pillar to post and meeting officials for ten years, he had failed to obtain the document.

"The order is from 1978. Subsequently, I became an MLA and after one becomes an MLA one forgets his/her own work. I haven't received that order until now, to be frank enough. But after becoming a minister and then Chief Minister I never had an opportunity to interact with that officer to ask for my documents, let me be frank," Parsekar said.

He added that he had to experience the harassment at the hands of government officials because his family had modest means.

"I would meet all officers and they would tell me this file lay somewhere in dusty bundles and they would point in the direction of one person who was a peon," the chief minister said.

Parsekar said, the peon turned out to be a retired government servant, whom he pursued, cajoled, bribed for a decade. But the peon died without handing over the file to him.

--IANS

maya/lok/vt