Want to work for Goa where my roots lie and take a shot at politics, why not: Paes

Kolkata: It was a case of game, set and match for tennis legendturned- political debutante Leander Paes.

The 48-year-old Olympic medalist who was born in Kolkata to a Goanese father, said he wanted to work for Goa where his roots lay, and knew TMC from his association with the City of Joy, and decided to give vent to his “passion” to work for people by joining the party ahead of elections to the tiny coastal state.

“My profession took me away from my roots and now that I have returned after retiring (from tennis) I have got this opportunity from Goa,” Peas told PTI in a telephonic interview. “My aim now is to do good for brothers and sisters of my country, I am starting that from Goa and I believe politics is the best way for that,” said the winner of numerous grand slam titles in tennis.

Paes said that though there have been offers from several parties, he chose to join Trinamool Congress.

“The opportunity of joining politics has been coming to me for many years. But this time, it was the right opportunity, the correct time, I was in the right position of my life where I have finished with my tennis career and have the time, space, mind(frame) and the passion to give to this (new career in politics),” said the alumni of Kolkata’s prestigious La Martiniere School and St Xavier’s College.

Paes, whose father Vece Paes, played mid-field for the award winning Indian field hockey team in the 1972 Munich Olympics, won the bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the first Indian to win an individual medal after 1952. His decision to switch to politics, a quarter of a century after Atlanta, took many by surprise.

“The reason I joined TMC Goa is because of its ideology,” he averred. Several Congressmen who have also joined the TMC in Goa have spoken of the party’s secular credentials as the reason for their choosing to go with party which has entered the state recently. The Trinamool Congress announced its presence in the former Potugese enclave by inducting ex-Congress leader Luizenho Faleiro and several Congressmen into its fold in September and October this year. Congress which had emerged as the largest single party in Goa in 2017, has since been hit by desertions to the BJP and now to the TMC.