OPPOSITION ON A HIGH

OPPOSITION ON A HIGH
* Demand CBI probe into police-drug mafia nexus 
* Assembly session adjourned twice over ruckus 
* Parrikar claims he saw Atala with politician’s son
HERALD REPORTER
PANJIM, JULY 20
Speaker Pratapsing Rane on Tuesday found himself in a tight spot over Opposition MLAs pressing demand for a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into the police-drug mafia nexus during the second day of the Monsoon Session of the Goa Legislative Assembly.
The resolve of the MLAs during Question Hour was such that the Speaker not knowing what to do adjourned the House for 10 minutes. Before leaving Rane maintained he could not force the Government on the inquiry. But the Opposition stuck to its guns as the Speaker returned after the 10-minute break.
With just 15 minutes remaining for the lunch break, Opposition leader Manohar Parrikar demanded there should be a decision on the floor of the House for a CBI inquiry or else there was no need to go on with the Question Hour session.
As Parrikar stood up and stuck to his demand for CBI inquiry all the Opposition MLAs started walking towards the well of the House shouting slogans like “Shame shame” and “Ek do, ek do (one two, two), Congress ko uthake fek do (throw the Congress out)…”. 
The Speaker non-committal on the inquiry, once again adjourned the House and walked away for the lunch break.
Parrikar maintained most of the ruling MLAs supported the Opposition’s demand. At least 34 of the MLAs are supporting us, he claimed. “Congress MLAs Victoria Fernandes, Agnelo Fernandes and Dayanand Narvekar and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party’s Deepak Dhavlikar are supporting us on this”, he stated.
Supporting the Opposition, Narvekar demanded to know what the Government was doing to remove the serious strictures passed by the High Court of Bombay at Goa against it in the police-drug mafia nexus case. The State is unwilling to handover the case to the CBI because it is scared more skeletons will fall out from the cupboard, he asserted.
When Chief Minister Digambar Kamat came out in support of the police by stating that they had taken suo motu cognisance of the drugs case in which several police personnel were arrested, Parrikar stood up and rubbished the CM’s stand.
He countered saying the police never took suo motu cognisance. “It was only after the youtube videos making the serious allegations against the police came to the notice of the media, which highlighted the same, the men in khaki were forced to act”, he mentioned.
In what could be a serious statement, Parrikar went on to state that he had seen Israeli drug dealer Atala with a politician’s son.
However, Parrikar neither named the politician nor did he have the photo to substantiate his claim.
He said the whole world was watching and by not acceding to the demand for inquiry the Government had shown it was guilty. Forget the police-drug mafia-politician nexus, at least go into the police-drug mafia nexus. The investigation cannot be done by the local police (Crime Branch) as per the directives of the Supreme Court, he said.