Goa Congress president Luizinho Faleiro made the statement saying casinos have made Goa the sin city of India and at the same time he also criticized the Laxmikant Parsekar led government with this regard. Faleiro said that the government had betrayed the people of the state by going back on its promise with regards to the discarding of casinos from the state.
[su_expand more_text=”READ MORE” less_text=” ” height=”0″ hide_less=”yes” link_style=”button” link_align=”center”] Faleiro, a former Goa chief minister, while speaking to reporters on the sideline of a social function in Panjim said that the government had failed to put a halt on prostitution which, he claimed, was out of control in the state.
Faleiro said, “This is the Goa which we want tourists to come to? Goa has become a sin city of India with its casino industry. Prostitution is also rampant in the state.”
Goa though a small state has four operational offshore casinos besides several other onshore casinos. Goa is one of the very few states in India, where casino gambling is still legal which is actually shameful on the part of the state government.
It was the BJP, led by Manohar Parrikar who had a nonstop campaign against the casino industry ahead of the 2012 state assembly polls. They also had promised that, if voted to power, its government would rid the Mandovi of the casinos.
Ignoring the promise made by the successive BJP-led coalition governments, led by Parrikar and Parsekar when now in power, are maintaining that the casino industry is essential to the economy of the state and discontinuing casinos would send a bad signal to investors who were eager on setting up businesses in Goa.
Faleiro also said that the former Congress-led coalition government (from 2007-2012) had made a mistake by granting licenses to the casino operations in Goa.
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