the goan I network
PANAJI
Exactly a year ago, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had asserted his government would make Goa plastic-free in a year at the State function to commemorate Goa Liberation Day. On Wednesday his nominee to take the salute at the official parade, Speaker Pramod Sawant echoed the same sentiment in a speech of Parrikar’s, he read out.
“Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar could not attend because of health issues. Therefore I am reading his speech in his absence,” Sawant said and urged Goans to make the State plastic and garbage-free.
In the speech he expressed indebtedness to freedom fighters, some of who paid with their lives in the liberation struggle, and the Indian armed forces for liberating Goa from the Portuguese.
“Indian freedom struggle was incomplete until Goa was eventually freed from 450 years of oppressive Portuguese rule. Portugal used religion to divide and rule to retain power in Goa,” Sawant said and recounted Goa’s progress in health, education, infrastructure, since 1961.
Meanwhile, the Opposition Congress picked Parrikar’s absence from the function barely two days after he dramatically appeared at the sites of under-construction Mandovi and Zuari bridges on Sunday, to take pot-shots at the ruling BJP and accused it of stage-managing photo-shoots to project him as a ‘Superman’ CM.
Congress spokesperson Urfan Mulla said: “Parrikar had the time and fitness to inspect an under-construction bridge but could not be present to hoist the tricolour today.”
Parrikar’s bridge excursions, his first public appearance since returning from AIIMS Delhi in mid-October, came at a time when the Congress had hit the streets with its Jan Aakrosh campaign with a “where is the chief minister” messaging. The Bombay High Court at Goa is also due to give orders on the admissibility of a petition seeking public disclosure of the Chief Minister’s health.
Mulla said, it’s a sad state of affairs that stage-managed photographs are being used to show that all is fine.
After Parrikar’s brief visits to the two bridge sites depicted through photographs officially released by his office on Sunday, the Congress had dared the ailing chief minister who is fighting advanced pancreatic cancer since February to hoist the national flag at Wednesday’s Liberation Day function.
Barring Vijai, Salcete MLAs skip
programme in Margao
MARGAO: Where have all the MLAs gone, was the question that did the rounds at the Liberation Day programme at the District Collectorate, South on Wednesday as almost all the MLAs from Salcete, barring one, were conspicuous by their absence for the programme.
While Fatorda MLA and TCP Minister Vijai Sardesai unfurled the National tricolour to mark the day, none of the Legislators from the taluka turned up for the Liberation Day function. While senior government officials, freedom fighters, students were all present at the programme, the MLAs were found absent at the programme.
