The other day, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant earned accolades at a party event at Udupi in Karnataka when he addressed the crowd in impeccable Kannada. A star speaker for his party in a State expected to go to the polls soon, Sawant drew rapturous applause for his gesture of addressing them in their native language.
Unfortunately, for the Chief Minister, while it may have earned him bouquets in Karnataka, back home in Goa it earned him brickbats galore. No sooner the video of his speech surfaced on social media platforms, his foes here in Goa were quick to latch on to the clip and slam him arguing that it was yet another indicator that the interest of Goa in the Mhadei dispute were compromised.
The argument against the Chief Minister proffered by his detractors was that with his Karnataka counterpart Basavraj Bommai repeatedly taking an aggressive stance on the Mhadei dispute, the least he could do was show his protest and decline to partake in the campaigning.
The Save Mhadei, Save Goa Front also launched a scathing attack on the CM, and have demanded an apology from him for campaigning in Karnataka in the midst of the Mhadei battle with that State.
