Ray of hope in restoration of Assolna Lohia Chowk

MARGAO, APRIL 21
At long last, there’s a ray of hope that the sanctity of the much-neglected Lohia Chowk at Assolna will be finally restored.
Perhaps for the first time in recent years, the District Magistrate, South G P Naik had a meeting with the concerned parties, including the PWD, freedom fighters and the panchayat on ways and means to restore the sanctity of the freedom fighter’s memorial at the Chowk.
That’s not all. After the meeting, the concerned parties decided to hold another round of meeting in the village on Monday and draw up a plan of action to clean up the mess before the Chowk is handed over to the Assolna village Panchayat for upkeep and maintenance. Says the District Magistrate, South: “All the parties have discussed the neglected state of affairs of the Lohia Chowk at Wednesday’s meeting. Another round of meeting will now be held on Monday how to go about the beautification and cleanliness work at the Chowk”.
Beautification work of the Assolna Lohia Chowk was taken up by local MLA and Minister for Water Resources, Filipe Neri Rodrigues after his first election a decade ago. The work, however, could not taken to the logical conclusion and the memorial erected at the Chow as part of the beautification plan, was desecrated day in and out for want of maintenance.
It was a year ago that PWD Minister, Churchill Alemao and Water Resources Minister Filipe Neri Rodrigues requested the district Magistrate to take suitable steps to restore the Lohia Chowk to its past glory. Sadly, the directives were confined to the papers for reasons best know to the district authorities.
The Chowk was named after the great nationalist leader Dr Ram Manohar Lohia visited Assolna village upon the invitation of Dr Juliao Menezes. Dr Lohia later addressed a huge public meeting in Margao on June 18 from where he gave a clarion call to Goans to liberate the motherland from the Portuguese regime.