Headlines
Goa Congress manifesto mum on casinos
Panaji, Jan 29
Less than a week after it upped
the ante against offshore casinos, the Congress appears to have skipped
its promise of doing away with the casinos altogether, from its
manifesto for the Panaji bye-poll which was unveiled Thursday.
Both
state Congress president Luizinho Faleiro and Surendra Furtado, the
party candidate for Panaji, also dodged questions on whether the
Congress poll campaign would accept donations from the controversial
offshore casino industry.
The Panaji assembly seat was vacated by the then chief minister Manohar Parrikar after his elevation as the defence minister.
"I
am giving you my word on it. We will get rid of the casinos," Faleiro
said when asked why the party has not mentioned in the official
manifesto its earlier promise of doing away with the offshore casinos.
Goa
has five operational offshore casinos and about 10 onshore casinos
functioning from five-star hotels and resorts, which attract hundreds of
thousands of gamblers to the state annually.
The glitzy casinos
have become one of the major issues for the Feb 13 bye-poll, even as the
Congress only last week claimed that it would expose the BJP's double
speak on the casino issue during its campaign.
The BJP, which has
been opposing casinos for over seven years, in its election manifesto
before the 2012 state assembly polls promised to do away with the
casinos on the Mandovi river, off Panaji.
But after coming to power, it said that it would relocate the casinos to deeper seas off Goa after four years by 2016.
Chief
minister Laxmikant Parsekar has now claimed on more occasions than one
that doing away with casinos may not be such a good idea at all and that
his BJP-led coalition government was open to renewal of licences.
While
the Congress is vocal about its opposition to the casinos, both Faleiro
as well as Furtado dodged queries on whether the party would accept
donations from casino operators to fund their party campaign.
Faleiro,
however, said that the party, instead of a high-pitch campaign launch,
would instead start with a solemn candle-light march, which would pass
by the river-fronted neon-lit offices of the offshore casino "as a
reminder of the BJP's failure to resolve the casino issue".
While
Furtado is contesting on behalf of the Congress, the BJP will be
represented by Sidharth Kuncolienkar, Parrikar's former political aide
Two Independents are also in the fray.