PANJIM: With hardly 48-hours left for the annual Carnival festival to kick off, the Goa traffic police have declined permission to Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) to hold the float parade on the traditional route along DB Road citing vehicular congestion.
However, the City Corporation is firm on its decision to go ahead with the traditional route. A joint meeting of police, CCP has been called by North Goa Collector on Thursday to work out a solution. The meeting will be also attended by Panjim MLA Atanasio ‘Babush’ Monserrate.
Addressing media persons on Wednesday, City Mayor Uday Madkaikar said that the traffic police have refused to give permission to organize the float parade on the route from St Monica jetty to Kala Academy. “The police have said that holding float parade on the main road will lead to traffic congestion,” he said.
“But, we are going ahead as per the plan. Under no circumstances the route will be changed,” Madkaikar said.
Mayor said that he along with the local MLA called on Collector seeking intervention in granting the necessary permission. “We informed the Collector that the Carnival parade was shifted to new route- Miramar, on account of construction work of third Mandovi Bridge, which is now completed,” he said.
The Carnival float parade in Panjim will be held on February 22.
Meanwhile, the Corporation will have its own float promoting Goa as wedding destination.
Also, the annual Samba Square will be also held at Panjim municipal garden. Live music performance, food court, kids’ zone and entertainment are all that will make Samba Square.
CCP Commissioner Sanjit Rodrigues said that this year there is a special theme for Samba Square- Pay for the theme. “The theme is Stray Dog Welfare Control. We have decided to form a corpus where people can donate willingly,” he said adding that the amount would be used towards controlling stray dog menace.
