Panaji : The BJP in Goa on Friday demanded the arrest and externment of Karnataka’s higher education minister for making inflammatory speeches over demolition of illegal shanties in Goa, some of them housing Kannadigas, and threatening several thousand Goan IT professionals living in Bengaluru.
“He should be arrested immediately and externed for making such statements,” Bharatiya Janata Party’s Goa state spokesperson Damodar Naik told reporters at a press conference at the party headquarters here on Friday.
On Thursday, Minister R.V. Deshpande accused the BJP-led Goa government of trampling on the rights of some Kannadiga occupants of the over 285 illegal shanties, some of which have already been demolished, and warned that Goa should not forget that 20,000-odd of its young workforce are employed in the information technology sector in Bengaluru.
“Your 15,000 to 20,000 young Goans are working as IT professionals in Bengaluru… don’t ask any irresponsible questions,” Deshpande said aggressively Thursday when asked by the media about emerging differences between Karnataka and Goa over the illegal shanties.
Disagreements first arose over the alleged diversion of the Mhadei river water by the former and now over the demolition of shanties at Baina, located 45 km from Panaji.
Deshpande was speaking to reporters outside the chief minister’s residence in Panaji, where he had arrived to speak to Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar over the slum demolition issue.
Speaking to reporters later, Parsekar expressed shock at Deshpande’s statement and said that the latter should not attempt to convert the issue into a Karnataka versus Goa affair, simply because there were people from several other states, including Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Maharashtra living in the same slum.
“Our people, whether they are in Bengaluru, Pune or Mumbai, have not encroached there, like (the encroachments) in Goa. They are well settled,” Parsekar said, adding that politicians should desist from making inflammatory speeches.
“Even those people living in the slums are not from Karnataka alone. They are from Maharashtra, Bihar, Andhra (Pradesh), Chhattisgarh, but the law of the land applies to everyone. Therefore, please do not bring politics to this,” said Parsekar.
When asked if the BJP unit in Goa would file a first information report against Deshpande, Naik said: “We have asked the Goa government to take the strongest possible action… if the inflammatory statements continue we will…”