Team Herald
MARGAO: The members of Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes have slammed PWD Minister Sudin Dhavalikar for targeting the ST community Minister Govind Gaude and demanded that he should resign as a minister for his various sins of commission and omission.
Briefing media persons, Goa ST Action Committee spokesman Anthony Barbosa questioned how MGP Executive President Narayan Sawant could comment on what happened at a Cabinet meeting.
“Narayan is not a Cabinet member and how could he know what happened there or is he just being Sudin Dhavalikar’s mouth piece?” he asked.
Asserting that Gawde is a performing minister and has performed exceedingly well as no controversy has been raised over his department since he took over as the minister, Barbosa said that on the other hand there are problems with the PWD.
“People are having protest rallies due to scarcity of water and the roads in Goa are pathetic and both these departments come under Sudin Dhavalikar who has proved to be a non-performing minister,” he said adding that for this reason alone Sudin should resign as a minister instead of seeking some other minister’s resignation.
Barbosa said that even the government has lost faith in the PWD under Sudin Dhavalikar because of which most of the works are being executed by the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation.
Barbosa also alleged that Sudin has a different way of looking at the SC or ST community and pointed out how he retained chairmanship of the ST Finance Corporation even though a ST member has to be named chairman.
President of Goa Dalit Vikas Santh Anand Assolkar said it was a matter of shame that despite being the PWD minister, Sudin could not get the new Mandovi Bridge named after Goa’s first chief minister Dayanand Bandodkar who belonged to the MGP.
Navelim Sarpanch Wilma D’Silva and Deputy Sarpanch Paul Pereira who were present for the media briefing with two others, all said that Govind Gaude is being targeted because he belongs to the ST community and because Sudin is casteist.
