Parties vow to get rid of casinos in poll-bound Goa

It's a game of Casino Royale in Goa as the various political parties here play out their strategies in a bid to woo the voter in their favour in the battle of the ballot during the Goa Legislative Assembly elections scheduled for February 4.

The Congress, Aam Aadmi Party and other political parties and Independents have all vowed in their manifesto and otherwise to chuck out the many offshore casinos that are parked on the famous Mandovi River in the Capital city of Panjim in Goa. However, the BJP seems to be playing it safe. When Panjim MLA Siddharth Kuncalienkar was asked why the Casinos did not figure in his manifesto for Panjim, he said that "though the Casino issue had cropped up during the bypolls in 2015, I had won by a 5000-plus vote margin – which I feel was a referendum on the offshore casinos in the Mandovi River."

He said that though he was "personally against casinos, the matter of the Casinos in the Mandovi River had to be decided by the (Goa) Government and not the MLA."

Kuncalienkar had stated this during the release of the BJP manifesto – at the hands of the BJP Goa President Vinay Tendulkar – which highlighted taking care of Panjim's

development over the next five years.