New Delhi: In 2012, while contesting the Goa assembly elections, the then Chief Minister (now Defence Minister of India) Manohar Parrikar had filed an affidavit before the Election Commission stating he owned assets worth Rs 3,40,44,829.
His liabilities came to Rs 43,82,874, and his income tax return for 2010-2011 showed Rs 14,11,661.
His movable assets include Rs 1 lakh in bank accounts, and Rs 30,39,069 in bonds, debentures and shares. He had policies worth Rs 34,58,643 and a Volkswagen Polo car worth Rs 7,06,200, apart from gold and jewellery worth Rs 6,16,000. The gross value of assets had then come to Rs 1,58,86,829.
Parrikar never wears gold ornaments, but carries two pens in his pocket. He used to often travel on a scooter in Panaji wearing a half-sleeve shirt, trousers and sandals.
One of his classmate in IIT Mumbai, who later became a businessman in Hyderabad, Bakul Desai says, Parrikar, while studying in IIT during the Seventies, travelled without ticket on Mumbai local trains with his friend, simply because they could not wake up the sleeping ticket booking clerks early in the morning.
Once at Dadar, a railway TTE (Travelling Ticket Examiner) fined him Rs 10.40p. A furious Parrikar then travelled without ticket on the local trains for a full semester, saying injustice was done to him.
But one day Parrikar realised his fault. He found he had cheated the government of Rs 11.20p. He bought stamps worth Rs 11.20p and then tore them up, and said "Ab hisaab baraabar" (Now everything is squared up).
