Quote, unquote, misquote… travails of Digambar Kamat (Comment)

PANAJI - Chief Minister Digambar Kamat is fast gaining a reputation in Goa and outside for putting his foot in his mouth with unerring precision, and with remarkable consistency.

Kamat, who leads the Congress-led coalition, said in a speech Saturday on women oriented issues that if women started pursuing politics, it would have a negative impact on society.

“Don’t fall for 33 percent reservation (in politics). Politics makes you go crazy. Women play an important role in transforming the society. We should look after our next generation,” Kamat said, in a brazen departure from the United Progressive Alliance’s pro-women reservation policy.

In his clarification Monday, Kamat sang a different tune, exactly what the media in Goa expected him to do.

He was in New Delhi to plead his case in the latest controversy over his sexist remarks. He sent a clarification through the department of information and publicity (IP) — which he controls as IP minister, saying he was misquoted by the media.

“I have throughout my career in politics always supported women in politics and will not, even in my wildest of dreams, speak against such reservation. We need more vibrant and dynamic women leaders in politics to render justice,” Kamat said in his clarification.

The director of IP, Menino Peres, himself was involved in the trouble-shooting process, calling media offices personally and imploring them to carry the clarification.

Kamat, who was once known as a quiet but understated and powerful number two in the earlier Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led coalition government’s cabinet, appears to have transformed into a limelight loving and gregarious chief political executive, who zips around snipping ribbons and making inaugural speeches by the half-dozen, every day.

After quitting the BJP dramatically in 2005, Kamat joined the Congress and became the consensus chief minister in 2007 during one of the many political upheavals that Goa is notorious for.

Kamat’s BJP hangover almost bought him his political pink slip last month, when he called Gujarat Chief Minister and Congress pet bugbear Narendra Modi “his best friend”.

“If they (Gujarat government) have invited, I will go. Modi is my best friend… When I am in Delhi for any conference, I have Sheila Dikshit on my one side and Narendra Modi on the other,” Kamat had said when he was asked if he would visit Gujarat for the BJP-ruled state’s golden jubilee celebrations.

Kamat’s remark earned him the ire of the Congress leadership, which summoned him. Again, the chief minister blamed the media for “misquoting” him.

His past in the BJP came back to haunt him when earlier this month he gave a stunning clean chit to leader of opposition and former chief minister Manohar Parrikar in a multi-crore scam involving infra-structure creation for the International Film Festival of India (IFFI).

The case is being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Kamat, who as a BJP culture minister was a member of a core committee in charge of clearing infrastructure projects for IFFI, had said there was no possibility of a scam and that the core committee - which was headed by Parrikar as chief minister, had not taken any improper decisions.

When senior Congressmen, including Rajya Sabha MP Shantaram Naik, dug out a 2004 report of an enquiry commissioned by the state Congress, which showed that the core committee, which comprised of Kamat, had indeed goofed up massively, Kamat claimed he was misquoted again.

Kamat’s repeated controversial utterances, numerous scams tumbling out from departments run by his ministries like mining, finances and information and publicity, plus his chronic inability to contain his mercurial and tainted cabinet ministers, whose public spats find their way into the local media virtually every day, have not earned him many friends in the state Congress leadership nor within the high command.