PANJIM: Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) on Wednesday took a major U-turn on the issue of Medium of Instruction (MoI) deciding to go with the present policy of funding Church-run English medium primary schools.
Speaking to Herald, PWD Minister Ramkrishna (Sudin) Dhavalikar said, “We will go ahead with the present MoI policy as we have realised that our party candidates were not successful in the recent Assembly elections and faced defeat as we took the MoI issue with us.”
He added, “We are not against Konkani or Marathi. Konkani will survive. It is painful that 4 to 5 candidates who were sure of winning faced defeat because of the MoI issue and others lost their deposits. This clearly shows that the people of Goa do not have their concentration on the issue of MoI and also are not interested and therefore we decided to come out of this.”
Before the elections, MGP had broken ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) because of the MoI issue and had later forged a pre-poll alliance with the Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM) to contest elections.
Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch (BBSM) slammed the MGP stating that it betrayed them on the MoI issue. “MGP backstabbed us, betrayed on MoI. It is not a surprise as it didn’t include MoI in their manifesto in order to seek minority votes and were not honest to the cause,” BBSM leader Subhash Velingkar said.
