India: 'Manohar Parrikar was a cricketer too'

Manohar Parrikar

KANPUR: A staunch follower of RSS ideology, Manohar Parrikar passed away in only 63 years.  He was a Goan, a metallurgist, union defence minister and BJP chief minister in Goa. What needs to be described here is his Kanpur connection.

During his student days at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay he visited at IIT, Kanpur. Being an all-rounder of his engineering college cricket team, he stayed at Kanpur for five long days in the year 1976. At that period of time, there used to be only five IITs in the whole of the country.

Giving information about his arrival in the city, Ravi Shukla, IIT media cell, disclosed when the sports fest had been organised here, Manohar Parrikar as a fine batsman performed very well in the cricket match. He amassed a good many runs for his team. Though Madras IIT remained the winner in the match, his team emerged as runners-up. That was his first visit to the city as a B.Tech student.      

Afterwards, he came to the city as the country’s defence minister. His Yoga exercise along with army men on Garrison Ground in Cantonment here drew ample attention of the people at that time. It was during that visit he had talked of making the city as a defence manufacturing hub. He even included Kanpur in the defence industrial corridor.