Manohar Parrikar

Manohar Gopalkrishna Prabhu Parrikar (born 13 December 1955) is an Indian politician from the Bharatiya Janata Party who is the current Defence Minister of India. Before being inducted into the Council of Ministers of the Union Government on 9 November 2014, he served as the Chief Minister of Goa, first from 2000 to 2005 and later from March 2012 to November 2014. He is a member of the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh.

Personal life

Manohar Parrikar was born in Mapusa, Goa. He studied at Loyola High School, Margao. He completed his secondary education in Marathi and went on to graduate in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay) in 1978. He is the first IIT graduate to serve as Chief Minister of an Indian state. He was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2001 by IIT Bombay.

His wife Medha Parrikar died of cancer in 2001. He has two sons.

Political career

Parrikar joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) at a young age and became a mukhya shikshak (chief instructor) in the final years of his schooling. After graduating from IIT, he resumed RSS work in Mapusa while maintaining a private business, and became a sanghchalak (local director) at the age of 26. He was active in the RSS's North Goa unit, becoming a key organiser of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. He was seconded by RSS to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with the objective of fighting the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party. Parrikar has often expressed considerable pride of his RSS background, saying that he learnt "discipline, progressiveness, gender equality, equality of all before the law, nationalism and social responsibility from the RSS". He is sometimes described as having been a pracharak of the RSS.