PANJIM: Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) President Girish Chodankar has claimed that six major issues promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP MPs from Goa have not been fulfilled.
Stating that AYUSH Minister Shripad Naik and MP Narendra Sawaikar acted as ‘moni babas’ (silent sages) in the Parliament, Girish who is contesting the Parliamentary elections from North Goa said that the people of Goa demand answers for the failures from the MPs.
Listing out the issues he said, “The Prime Minister ahead of the 2014 elections had arrived in Goa and when a delegation met him at the airport requesting to grant special status to Goa, he had promised during his rally that Goa would be granted special status. When he had said that it was an easy task, then in five years why the Prime Minister was not able to do it and why the MPs from the state could not take up this issue with the Prime Minister and remind him that he had promised this to Goans.”
He further said, “The second question is the mining issue which, neither then nor now, the MPs raised this very important issue. They neither raised the mining issue in the Parliament nor did they raise it with the Prime Minister or the Mines Minister.”
“When you have not been successful in solving these very important questions, then on what grounds are you going back to the people requesting their votes?” he questioned.
Stating that the third question pertained to the CRZ, he questioned why the Union government did not seek the response and take the stakeholders into confidence. “Like CRZ, the Union Government by nationalising the rivers of the state bulldozed the rights of the Goans. The people of Goa have been opposing the river nationalisation and none of you raised this question before the Central government. What were the compulsions that made you remain silent on this issue which is very close to every Goan as the livelihood is dependent on rivers”, he stated.
Questioning why the people of the state suffer from coal pollution when Goa is being used as a transit place and has no direct benefit from the coal handling, Girish demanded to know why the MPs sidelined the coal pollution issue.
The last question he said was the increasing unemployment amongst the youth. “The next promise made by the BJP in their manifesto was the promise to provide 10 crore jobs to the citizens in five years. Wherever we are campaigning we come across unemployed youth who want the answer to this question from the MPs”, he added.
