Thaindian News

Panaji, Dec 16 (IANS) Even as Congress president Sonia Gandhi, at her public rally here Saturday, promises to lay out Goa’s roadmap for a quarter century ahead, there are more niggling problems at hand that she may have to urgently address.

Gandhi’s rally comes two days ahead of the 50th anniversary of Goa’s liberation from Portuguese rule and is part of the combined celebratory package organised by the state government and the Congress party.

While Gandhi is expected to dramatically reveal Goa’s roadmap for the next 25 years, there are questions being asked of her leadership and of the Congress-led coalition government here on account of illegal mining, maladministration and political corruption. Chief Minister Digambar Kamat is himself battling charges of illegal mining.

One of the sceptics is Village Groups of Goa (VGG), a collective of about 60 rural groups spread throughout Goa, which has planned a massive protest rally in Panaji that will cap four-year-long protests against a controversial futuristic land use document — Regional Plan 2021 — which civic groups as well as the opposition allege is overloaded in favour of the real estate lobby.

“We want Sonia Gandhi to see this dissent in Goa and how her Congress government in demolishing the unique identity of Goa at breakneck speed,” said Peter Fernandes, who is coordinating the protests for the village groups.

On Dec 17, Sonia Gandhi will also see an eclectic crew of intellectuals, litterateurs, retired bureaucrats, educationists and freedom fighters and a section of the student community waving black flags at her in protest against the Congress-led coalition government’s policy to bring English on par with regional languages Marathi and Konkani as a medium of instruction (MoI) in local schools.

“Sonia Gandhi’s Congress is slowly destroying Goa’s unique identity by killing the regional languages and promoting English in schools. Sonia Gandhi is not welcome,” said Uday Bhembre, a Sahitya Akademi award winning writer.

Also, a bus owners association representing several thousand public transport carriers in Goa has alleged coercion by the Goa government’s transport department officials to pull buses off public routes and ferry people for Gandhi’s rally.

Finally, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has publicly issued a list of 10 questions relating to illegal mining, corruption in the Congress ranks and obliteration of the unique Goan identity, which they want Gandhi to address.