Manohar Parrikar/ Pic: IANS
Panaji: Claiming that Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar was responding well to treatment abroad, the state BJP on Tuesday slammed the media for its repeated questions on his health.
BJP legislator and the party's Goa unit Spokesperson Nilesh Cabral rejected the Congress demand for regular bulletins on the health of Parrikar, under treatment in the US for advanced pancreatic cancer.
"The Chief Minister is not well -- everybody knows it. He is being treated and is showing good recovery. And when he is fit to travel, as per the medical advice, he will fly back from the US," Cabral said.
Parrikar was moved to a medical facility in New York last month, a few weeks after he was first hospitalised on February 15, when he experienced stomach pain.
Parrikar, who was hospitalised in Goa and Mumbai earlier, has not attended office for nearly two months.
While there were no health bulletins by medical professionals on the severity of Parrikar's ailment, informal updates from the Chief Minister's Office have maintained that he is suffering from "mild pancreatitis".
Responding to criticism by the Congress over Parrikar's decision to appoint a three-Minister committee to run the state in his absence, the BJP leader drew similarities between Goa and Tamil Nadu which were, he claimed, governed by committees of ministers in the absence of the Chief Minister.
"A similar thing has happened in Tamil Nadu when four of its ailing Chief Ministers have been admitted to hospitals in India and abroad. Similar committees were formed and that state has functioned well," Cabral said.