NT NETWORK
PANAJI
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday said that the recent issuance of a notice by the income tax department to the economic wing of the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman has not resulted in any adverse effect on the public, especially the Catholic population, since most of the people in Goa are literate and understanding, and furthermore, the state BJP unit has not received any related queries from the members of the Catholic community.
The state unit of the BJP also held the opposition parties responsible for misleading the public on this issue, especially as the state assembly elections are round the corner.
“We will ensure that the notice does not create a public outcry, as it had happened when the then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had scrapped the Good Friday holiday in the state, during the earlier BJP rule in Goa,” said the Curchorem legislator of the party, Nilesh Cabral while interacting with the media, at the city BJP headquarters.
“We find nothing wrong in the notice as it has been served not to penalise the church,” he added, pointing out that the notice has not gone to all churches in Goa, but their parent body, for obtaining its accounts, mainly because the collections in various churches could include the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.
Cabral also said that the temples in Goa, unlike Catholic prayer houses, are covered under the Mahajani Act and hence report directly to the mamlatdars, in respective talukas. He also maintained that few newspapers are creating unnecessary anxiety among the public over the issue.
Panaji MLA Sidharth Kunkalienkar, present on the occasion, said that the Goa MLAs regularly submit their annual income details to the state Lokayukta, and the latest dictum of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the BJP MPs and MLAs as regards submitting the details of their bank transactions between November 8 and December 31, to the party president Amit Shah is a welcome move. “In fact, if the party directs such exercise annually, then it can be done,” he added.
