Panaji has been in the middle of the crossfire between Goa’s ruling and Opposition political parties and personalities on the question of freeing the State’s capital of its ‘sin city’ taint owing to the thriving off-shore casino industry it hosts in the Mandovi river.
For three consecutive general elections in 2007, 2012 and 2017, the issue of removing the casino vessels out of the Mandovi river dominated the debate and was one of the principal planks on which these elections were fought.
But the only official attempt to remove the casinos in all of these 12 years was the dubious and feeble attempt made by the Congress-led coalition government which rode to power with Digambar Kamat as chief minister post the 2007 polls. The order issued by the Kamat government post a cabinet decision directing the off-shore casinos to relocate to the Aguada Bay in 2009, failed the test of judicial scrutiny from the Bombay High Court and the government eventually threw in the towel.
Then came the turn of the BJP to renege. With the late Manohar Parrikar in the driver’s seat, it notched a decisive 21-seat win in the 2012 assembly elections largely riding on the popularity of his “will remove casinos from the Mandovi” promise. The casinos stayed put but wary of the criticism, the late chief minister who’s larger-than-life persona took a hit and earned him the U-turn chief minister sobriquet, introduced a damage-control measure. He made the Mandovi river only a “temporary” home for the casinos by introducing an administrative order which required the government to look out for an alternative site and give only six-monthly extensions for operations to continue in the Mandovi.
Monserrate’s manifesto
Suddenly in May this year, the ‘remove casinos’ slogan got a new lease of life when the capital’s current legislator, Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate, made it his chief poll plank at the bypoll he won post the mid-March death of Parrikar.
The issue dominated the news headlines when Monserrate led street demonstrations to force the government’s hand on the issue and followed it up by strongly pursuing it in the Assembly even after his infamous defection from the Congress to the ruling BJP in the company of nine other legislators.
Current scenario
Monserrate’s effort forced the government to bring the issue back on its agenda. Ports Minister Michael Lobo donned the mantle of the government’s chief trouble-shooter and promised in the Goa legislative assembly to begin the groundwork to eventually shift the casinos to the Aguada Bay area.
But three months later, Lobo himself is unsure of the casinos moving to the Aguada Bay for technical feasibility reasons and has come up with a new alternative - a gaming cluster in the vicinity of Mopa where the new Greenfield International Airport is slated to come up.
Lobo categorically told The Goan that the casinos will not leave the Mandovi river till such time as the Mopa Airport comes up.
Lobo in a telephonic interview revealed that the government has, in fact, no intention of shifting the casinos out of the Mandovi until the Mopa Airport comes up.
As reported in The Goan on Saturday, Lobo has now made a U-turn and says there is no question of shifting the casinos to Aguada Bay at all.
“Only three of them will be shifted and only further upstream from the current location in the Mandovi. It (new location) has nothing to do with the Aguada Bay,” Lobo said.
He said, all the casinos cannot be shifted and only three will go to the norther side of the river. The balance three casinos will remain where they currently are, he added. So if the government isn’t shifting the casinos at all from the Mandovi river, why is it that the casino operators were being given only six-months’ extensions to operate there?
Lobo said: “A time will come when we will start preparing the casino policy, including fixed locations for the casinos. At that time we will renew their licenses up to the time the new policy comes into force. It will take some time.”
Lobo said, the government will move towards shifting these off-shore casinos to land and the area around the Mopa Airport is already being discussed as the alternative place.
The Ports Minister also said the casino operators do not want to shift as they have made huge investments after the government gave them the license.
“They shouldn’t be treated like rubber-balls and made to go from here to there. There has to be clarity which will come only when the casino policy is framed once work on the Mopa Airport progresses,” he said.
Lobo however said within a month one of the two vessels will be shifted to the Betim-Verem side of the Mandovi, wherever the waters are not rough. He said, the spot is being identified and once the report of the Captain of Ports on the safety of the place is ready, we will give clearances to shift.
