PANJIM: The Congress on Saturday took a potshot at the ruling coalition two days after its former minister Nilkant Halarnkar was issued summons to appear before anti corruption sleuths in the Housing Board land acquisition scam.
Party’s general secretary Trajano D’Mello called the move a blackmailing tactic ahead of the crucial 2017 State assembly elections. “The recent summons issued by the vigilance department to him (vice president of the party Nilkant Halarnkar) is a testimony of blackmailing tactics. This is a clear indication that BJP is feeling the heat at the ground level and is therefore indulging in such crooked tactics towards its opponents. These are attempts to divert the focus of campaigning by its opponents,” he alleged speaking a press briefing on Saturday.
The Anti Corruption Branch (ACB) issued summons to Aam Admi Party’s chief ministerial candidate Elvis Gomes and Halarnkar for investigation in the alleged massive scam. Halarnkar who was then chairman of Goa Housing Board and Gomes the managing director are charged with allegedly illegally converting the acquired land and handing it to a private party who claimed to be an agriculturist but later developed it for commercial purpose. The offence occurred between 2007 and 2011, involving 30,226 square metre of land in Margao.
Interestingly, the summons comes nearly six months after the ACB registered an offense under sections 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of IPC along with other sections of prevention of corruption act 1988. Halarnkar, a former State Nationalist Congress Party president, had joined the Congress in May.
D’Mello questioned the timing of the summons alleging that the ACB is acting without getting into the merits of the case. “On one hand, the crime branch which has become a tool in the hands of the government made a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to close a land grabbing case against Tourism Minister (Dilip Parulekar) even though the courts determined that he was involved in usurping land,” he added.
The Opposition also took a dig at Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar’s recent remark terming Mauvin Godinho’s power subsidy scam as an ‘attempt to scam.’ Godinho, last week, quit Congress to join the saffron party.
“He (Parrikar) has come out with a new criminal section “Attempt to scam”. By this new criminal term he is trying to infer that the Rs 35000 crore mining scam was just an attempt to scam, and in his greed to come to power he fooled the people of Goa and rendered lakhs of Goans jobless and brought misery into these families,” he commented.
Party President Luizinho Faleiro had also accused the BJP of “using, manipulating and abusing its own leaders, who are now feeling suffocated and threatened to its blackmailing tactics.”
