Now that ailing Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is back in office, it is time for Congress leaders to perform their own 'shradh' (funeral ceremony), Goa's Power Minister Nilesh Cabral said on Tuesday.

The Minister was responding to a jibe by state Congress spokesperson Jitendra Deshprabhu in October, after Parrikar returned from New Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences where he was being treated for advanced pancreatic cancer, and remained confined to his private residence.

"Either show that he (Parrikar) is alive or offer his shradh," Deshprabhu had said, while paraphrasing a Marathi idiom.

Cabral also said, that Parrikar on New Year's Day visited the State Secretariat and had a meeting with several ministers and party workers during his brief one and a half-hour visit, the Chief Minister's first trip to his office since September.

"The CM met Cabinet Ministers and key supporters. He also signed files and he is expected to call a Cabinet meeting soon," Cabral said.

Parrikar has been in and out of hospitals in Goa, Mumbai, New York and Delhi since February. Over the last few months, the Opposition has been demanding his resignation, claiming that administration had come to a standstill due to his prolonged absence from office, on account of his illness.

--IANS

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