The morning after the Big 60th bash

BASURI DESAI

basuri@herald-goa.com

With a crowd of more than 50,000 people and 902 buses to transport these people, the Bharatiya Janata Party celebrated the 60th birthday of Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar on the Sports Authority of Goa (SAG) ground on Sunday. The SAG ground is used for various purposes on a daily basis. Goan athletes use it to practice every day, senior citizens use it for walks and children use it to play but no heed was paid to that by Panjim MLA, Siddharth Kunkolienkar. As a result, the ground was left in bad condition the morning after. 

Our Monday edition (page 2) carried a similar report as well and as a result, the furious MLA called up the Herald and asked us to inspect the ground which was cleaned and cleared of garbage. All wrappers and boxes had been cleared and on the outside, the ground looked clean. The MLA however, must not have visited the ground himself before inviting the Herald to do so. A site visit painted a different picture. 

There were more than 200 athletes and sportsmen practicing/playing on the ground and senior citizens were also seen taking a walk on the joggers track. We found that there were numerous holes dug into the ground to install barricades to control the crowd that had gathered the previous day. 

The holes in the ground were clearly a hindrance to the athletes. Additionally, they also posed an injury threat to the sportsmen. This however, must not have been noticed by the MLA or authorities.

Besides potholes in the ground, we also noticed that there were thousands of water bottle caps strewn all over. Water was distributed to the crowd the previous day and even though, the empty plastic bottles were cleared, the presence of bottle caps all over caused some annoyance to people using the area. 

The empty food boxes from the ground were cleared but the boxes outside, by the road were still lying there. These boxes were visible on the entire stretch of road from Kala Academy to Campal.

Kunkolienkar, on Monday morning called up and accused the Herald of malicious journalism. But based on his request, we inspected the area and present these findings.