Panaji, Mar 23 (IANS): Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, who is also a doctor of alternative medicine, on Monday admitted, that he did not gauge the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, before his video conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 20.

The Chief Minister's admission comes days after he was slammed by the Opposition as well as civil society, for his reluctance to postpone the March 22 Zilla Panchayat polls in wake of the pandemic; a decision Sawant took only after his video-conference with Modi and the intervention of the Bombay High Court bench in Goa.

"We did not gauge the severity of this earlier. We began to realise the severity of it after the video conference with Modiji on March 20," Sawant told a press conference on Monday.

Sawant said, that he is now in touch with the Union Home Minister Amit Shah every day, who is following up on the efforts of the state government to rein in the coronavirus menace.

In several media interactions as well as election campaign meetings, Sawant as well as state Bharatiya Janata Party president Sadanand Shet Tanavade had insisted that the coronavirus pandemic would cause any harm to Goa and had urged people to come out in large numbers to vote on March 22, when the polls were originally scheduled.

After the interaction with Modi on March 20, the Chief Minister announced the postponement of the elections from March 22 to March 24.

The elections were indefinitely postponed only after an activist petitioned the Bombay High Court bench in Goa, which subsequently urged the Goa government as well as the State Election Commission to postpone the elections in view of the pandemic.