MARGAO: Congress President Girish Chodankar said that the meeting of Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant with the mining dependents was yet another farce put up by him to bargain for more time to resume the mining industry.
Congress has demanded that the government has to give a final date for when they will resume the mining in Goa.
Chodankar said that the Chief Minister has been giving reasons, one after another, delaying the further resumption of mining activity. The meeting of Friday also remained inconclusive, as expected, because the government has no plan to restart the mining.
“Sawant has conveniently forgotten his statement about his scheduled follow-up meeting with Union Mines Minister Pralhad Joshi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which was falling out of his much-discussed New
Delhi visit,” Chodankar stated.
“None of the meetings happened even though it is going to be almost a month that the Chief Minister had visited the national capital, hurriedly and met the Prime Minister,” he said.
Chodankar said, “Sawant should admit that the BJP has no political will to resume the mining activity as the party does not want people to get economically better.”
“The entire game plan is to keep people poor so that they could be exploited during the elections, which is not going to happen in the future considering the immense anger against BJP amongst the mining dependents,” he alleged.
Chodankar said that the BJP-led government should pronounce their accurate plan to resume the mining activity.
“Why farce of meetings after meetings right from Prime Minister, Home Minister, Environment Minister and so on since 2012?” asked Congress.
“What stops the mining from resuming when BJP is in power in the State and also at the Centre?” Girish asked while also pointing out that the State government has paid blind eye towards the issue raised by truck operators who are asking for a better rate for the transportation of the ore.
“The government should understand that resuming transportation without giving proper financial benefit to the truck owners serves no purpose. Give economical justice to the locals by Keeping out all BJP dalals involved in ore transportation,” demanded Chodankar.
“We strongly demand that the Chief Minister should give a final date for resumption of legal mining in Goa without any further delay or he should declare that his defective government cannot start mining.”
