PANJIM: In a major scuffle between the BJP and Congress worker’s during a protest march held by the former accusing ‘Rahul Gandhi of misguiding the nation on Rafale issue’, the parties’ workers clashed on the DB Road in the city.
The situation was tense for more than an hour on Friday evening with workers from both the parties abusing and throwing food items at each other, due to which the commuters were put to severe hardship with traffic block.
Problem began when, as part of nationwide agitation, the BJP workers were protesting outside Congress’ State Headquarters alleging that Rahul Gandhi was misguiding the nation on Rafale issue and that he should apologise to the people and the Defence Forces. A protest of around 150 BJP workers was led by, among others, the Party’s State Chief Vinay Tendulkar, General Secretary Satish Dhond, Ministers Mauvin Godinho and Vishwajit Rane.
While Congress leaders including its State Mahila President Pratima Coutinho charged the BJP workers of assaulting her and her fellow workers, the latter has accused former of “instigating the peaceful rally.”
The protest that started at 4 pm was peaceful till it reached just opposite Congress House, where Congress party
had staged ‘Gandhigiri’. Around a dozen of Congress women were waiting with flowers in their hand, snacks and traditional Aarti thali to welcome the BJP workers. A huge banner mentioning “Goa Pradesh Congress Committee Welcomes Goa BJP to Explain their Lies on Rafale Deal; The Nation needs to know the truth” was displayed outside the party headquarters of Congress.
The scuffle began after BJP workers burnt effigy of Rahul Gandhi in front of Congress House, and just then, the Congress workers moved ahead to serve the snack, water and offer flowers. Both the parties’ workers turned aggressive and got into scuffle. Food items and water bottles were thrown at each other leading to verbal spat. The workers got into major scuffle with both parties refusing to bow down.
A heavy police force deployed at the site later managed to separate the workers and smoothen the traffic flow.
Addressing media persons post the protest, Coutinho claimed that she was beaten up and manhandled by male BJP workers when she had gone to offer them the snacks. She displayed couple of shoes and sandals claiming that they were thrown on her.
Showing bruises on her hands, Coutinho also claimed that fellow Mahila Congress workers were also attacked by men from the BJP crowd. “I would call them goons of BJP. They were not looking workers of BJP,” she said.
North Goa Congress President Vijay Bhike said that BJP workers had no courtesy to respond to the large hearted behaviour shown by Congress leaders. “We were only few. If we wanted to clash, we could have gathered our crowd. But what we wanted was to greet them as they had come to our door steps,” he said.
BJP Spokesman Damodar Naik, however, refuted the allegation with the claim that Coutinho had spat water on the workers, which angered them.
“There is clear video footage. You can go through. You will see how Congress workers were instigating the BJP’s peaceful morcha. You will see how Pratima was spitting water on the crowd,” Naik said.
He said “Congress wanted to divert the entire topic, because of which they staged fake Gandhigiri and tried to instigate crowd. Congress leaders who are neck deep in scams wanted to avoid answering our valid questions and hence adopted this trick to instigate the crowd”.
