Panaji: Refuting the charges levelled by the
Congress in its “chargesheet” on Monday, the BJP stated that the Congress that didn't raise its voice in the assembly for the last four-and-a-half years and had woken up now because the elections are around the corner.
BJP spokesperson and Tivim MLA
Kiran Kandolkar
claimed that the party had fulfilled 90 percent of its manifesto. Asked on the major unfullfilled promises which formed the plank for the party to come to power in 2012 including casinos, he admitted that they were still working towards shifting the
casinos
out of the Mandovi river and regulating their business.
The party tried to move them out of the Mandovi river but couldn’t stop them directly as many of them have invested their money, Kandolkar said.
Chief minister
Laxmikant Parsekar, earlier, said that he was not giving any committment of renewing license for the sixth off shore casino. Parsekar said, “At present, I am happy that we have received the amount of renewal licence fees, nearly 48 crore. We can think later of whether to give them the permission to operate or not though I would not like to commit anything over it”.
As regards RP2021 which the party had promised to scrap, Kandolkar said the party would declare the regional plan by December. Kandolkar also said that 4-5 Congress MLAs have approached the BJP to contest the 2017 polls. “The party is yet to decide on it,” he said.
Since Monday, BJP headquarters has been having a series of meetings since the arrival of its national general secretary
Anil Jain. He undertook a review of the election preparedness of the party, holding meetings with MLAs, ministers and party leaders wherein he discussed about strategies to retain power. This comes in the wake of reports of resentment against the government and also the possiblity of MGP trying to emerge stronger.