Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s decision to amend a law to allow transfer of casinos’ licences has earned him the wrath of political opponents and activists again.
Within a day of his announcement and the drafting of new rules with a provision for transfer of vessel, Congress on Saturday asked him to stop making “U-turns” and oust casinos from the Mandovi river as promised by him before coming to power in March 2012.
The Chief Minister was apparently referring to a proposal from the Sahara Group, whose vessel Qing is docked at the Western India Shipyard in Vasco. The vessel has sought transfer of its casino Maharaja licence.
“Mr. Parrikar, as Leader of the Opposition [BJP], had brought women and children to the streets, saying the casinos were corrupting our culture,” recalled Pradesh Congress Committee president John Fernandes. He dismissed the Chief Minister’s claim that Goans would not be allowed in casinos.
“How is he going to differentiate between Goans and non-Goans? Does the Constitution allow such a differentiation?” Mr. Fernandes asked.
Mr. Parrikar recently announced that people domiciled in the State would be banned entry into casinos from March 1 once the Goa Public Gambling (Prevention) Amendment Bill, passed a year ago, was notified. The new rules would make it mandatory for customers to prove that they were not domiciled in Goa by producing government documents. He said the government would appoint a gaming commissioner to regulate the casino industry.
But “No gaming commissioner has been appointed and no mechanism put in place to check illegalities, suggesting that the government is in connivance with casino owners in the illegal transactions,” Sabina Martins, convener of Aam Aurat Aur Aadmi against Gambling, an umbrella organisation of civil society groups, told The Hindu on Sunday.
The groups are livid with Mr. Parrikar, who has not only failed to keep his promise to oust offshore casinos from the Mandovi riverfront but also, in his first budget, reduced the casino entry fee from Rs. 2,000 to 500. Simultaneously though, he increased the casino licence fee. Responding to his critics, Mr. Parrikar said that since regulation of casino operations was a complicated, serious issue, a thorough study had to be done before notifying the Bill.
The Chief Minister has come out with a policy by which the government will not renew the licences of off-shore casinos after a cut-off date. Accordingly, six months ago, the Cabinet adopted a policy framework wherein licences of those casinos expiring before March 31, 2014, could be renewed but with a rider that they would move out of the Mandovi riverfront within two years.
“By the time I complete four years in the chair, there will be no casino boats on the waters of Goa,” Mr. Parrikar said. “I may require one more year to completely get them out if there are any licensing obligations.”
But civil society groups are unimpressed. The death last July of Sai Dhanush, 20, from Hyderabad, who fell from an offshore casino, gave momentum to the demand for forming a gaming commission. But once the public and media anguish died down, there was no sign of regulation. The youth should have been barred from entering the casino as he was under 21.
Satish Sonak of the Goan People’s Forum describes the Chief Minister’s decisions as a “complete betrayal of the people who believed Mr. Parrikar’s stand against casinos and gambled on him in the previous Assembly elections.”
