TEAM HERALD
MARGAO: Condemning Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar’s statement that the government will host investor summit in the state on the lines of ‘Vibrant Gujarat’, Independent MLA Vijai Sardesai slammed the Chief Minister for needlessly copying the Gujarat model to please his political bosses.
He said Parsekar’s statement was all the more ridiculous because an issue like Regional Plan is yet to be settled and unlike Gujarat and Bengal, land in Goa is scarce and there is no proper infrastructure.
He reminded that Vibrant Gujarat has resulted in uncontrolled industrialization leading to pollution in Gujarat which Goans are opposed to. “In the past Goa has seen power intensive and polluting industrial units brought in by the Congress where Goans neither got employed nor wished to get employed. All this led to beautiful and picturesque spaces getting polluted and becoming eyesores”, he said, adding that such history should not get repeated and any such step needs to be properly discussed and debated by convening an Assembly session.
He questioned whether this was the epilogue of the statement that the demand for Special Status is impractical and impossible. Sardesai reiterated that he along with the opponents of Mopa Airport have always reasoned that Mopa and Special Status that the BJP was supporting was actually a contradiction, adding “by writing off Special Status, the CM is ushering in a justification for Mopa and the consequent influx of lakhs that will irreversibly change the demography of Goa”.
Sardesdai further demanded to know whether the CM’s statement was yet another way of ensuring that the Environment and Forest Minister Alina Saldanha quits the Environment and Forest Ministry and thus automatically clear
a persistent thorn in the government’s plans to have
‘development’.
