india

Updated: Dec 01, 2018 20:26 IST

Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar is “much improved” and is “recovering well”, a minister said after meeting the ailing leader at his home here.

Parrikar, who is battling a pancreatic ailment and is confined to his home every since his discharge from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi on October 15, held a meeting with BJP legislators including ministers on Saturday.

“To be very frank and without any exaggeration, he appeared in very good health and I must say from (among) all the times that I saw him, he certainly looks like a much improved person and that he is recovering very well,” panchayats minister Mauvin Godinho told reporters after the meeting.

“He individually asked every MLA what his difficulty is; what he wants done; what he encounters because of the particular circumstances because he (Parrikar) is sick and can’t be available day to day. So everybody expressed his problem and he gave a solution,” he said.

“He actively participated and took very keen and grave interest in each query and also gave a solution. It was a very lively discussion that took place,” Godinho added.

Parrikar holds sporadic meetings either with individual ministers or officers, but has not been seen in public or left his residence at the state capital’s Dona Paula locality. Prior to this, the chief minister held a cabinet meeting at his residence on October 31, with the Chief Minister’s office releasing an image of an emaciated Parrikar on a couch while his cabinet colleagues gathered around.

On Wednesday, ruling alliance partner Goa Forward Party’s chief Vijai Sardesai called on Parrikar at his residence and reported that the impression outside is ‘not true.’

“We spoke about everything. It is not at all they are saying. What impression they are getting outside it is not at all (true). I have seen him with my own eyes now,” Sardesai told Hindustan Times.

With Parrikar’s illness keeping him out of active life and in and out of hospitals and the coalition partners yet to agree to an alternative arrangement, Goa has been without a performing chief minister for the better part of the last nine months.

Earlier this year Parrikar spent three months in the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in the USA, besides spending time in Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital, Goa’s Goa Medical College and Hospital as well as in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.