NT NETWORK
PANAJI
Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Luizinho Faleiro has said that the party will strive to get ‘special status’ for the state, if brought back to power by defeating the incumbent Bharatiya Janata party-led government.
Announcing its first election promise in the run up to the 2017 assembly election, Faleiro said that the Congress party will make special status to Goa as their 2017 poll promise, to protect its identity as well as for financial package from the Centre.
He said, “I can promise you one thing…I will create awareness and consciousness. I will fight to see that Goa gets a special status and it will be one solemn promise, election promise in our manifesto that if we come to power, we will give special status to the state of Goa.”
Taking a dig at Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar for his statement that it was impossible to get special status for Goa, Faleiro said, “The BJP overnment has shamefully betrayed the people of Goa on their poll promise to grant special status to Goa. The BJP leaders need to apologise to the voters for the lie and betrayal.”
“It is one thing that Goans must fight and it is the most popular aspiration of Goans,” Faleiro said.
He further said that the government is trying to confuse the people on two different aspects of special status, protecting the identity and financial package.
The former chief minister said, “We should fight for both, to maintain our land, identity, culture and also to get the financial assistance because Goa is on a meltdown. We are in a debt trap with one of the highest per capita loans.”
Stating that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has pointed out that the economy of the state is in doldrums and Goa needs financial assistance from the Centre, he said, “We need more funding from Centre and less loans.”
Reminding the BJP that it was their poll promise in 2012 and 2014, Faleiro said, “I would like to recall here that it was then chief minister Manohar Parrikar, who had moved the resolution in the House for special status and had even led a delegation to former prime minister Manmohan Singh demanding the same.”
“Even the present Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Goa visit in 2014 just before Lok Sabha elections had said that if a proposal comes from the state for special status, his government would be very happy to accept it,” he added.
Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition Pratapsing Rane reiterated his demand to declare monkeys and wild boars as vermins and expressed displeasure over the functioning of the forest department.
“I do not understand the reason for not listing wild monkey and wild boar in this category. I was the one who had raised the issue on the floor of the House and had demanded that these two wild species be culled,” Rane said.
He refuted the argument of the forest department that due to lesser number of claims for compensation, the wild life board cannot jump to the final step of declaring the animals as vermin. “I have been forest minister for over 30 years. During my tenure, hundreds of complaints have come against these wild animals. In my Sattari taluka, I have seen people creeping about these species every day. They destroy plantations and sometime even harm people,” he said.
