The chief minister fielded a volley of questions from the Opposition benches regarding the fire that broke out at Birch by Romeo Lane, a nightclub at Arpora village in North Goa that claimed 25 lives last month.
'When an establishment operates despite demolition or closure orders, without proper fire exits, evacuation plans or safety audits, and yet is allowed to host large crowds, the state cannot hide behind the language of accident.' 'The authorities were aware of the risks and of the violations, but chose not to act decisively because doing so would have inconvenienced those with influence and financial stakes.' 'In such a scenario, the moral and legal responsibility for the resulting deaths moves from negligence towards culpability; calling it 'murder' is a way of underlining that these lives were sacrificed at the altar of greed and complicity, not fate.'
Congress's South Goa candidate Viriato Fernandes has claimed the Indian Constitution was 'forced' on Goa after its liberation from the Portuguese rule in 1961.
The opposition party termed the defection by eight out of its 11 MLAs in Goa only seven months after the assembly elections as the "height of betrayal and shamelessness."
The Congress on Sunday removed Michael Lobo from the post of Leader of Opposition in Goa legislative assembly, accusing him and former chief minister Digambar Kamat of "conspiring" against the party and "hobnobbing with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to ensure a split".
Yuri Alemao, Altone D'costa and advocate Carlos Alvares Ferreira, the three Congress MLAs who didn't join the eight of their former party men in jumping ship speak up about their decisions and their motivations to stay with the 137-year-old Congress.
Left with just three MLAs, the Congress does not have the required one tenth of the legislative strength in the 40-member House to claim the Cabinet minister-level post.
In a similar move in July 2019, 10 Congress MLAs had switched over to the BJP.
In what could signal the end of its long-standing alliance with the Congress in Goa, the Nationalist Congress Party on Thursday announced its decision to contest both the seats in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Five Goa Congress MLAs, who went incommunicado a day before, attended the state assembly proceedings on the first day of the monsoon session on Monday, and claimed there was 'nothing wrong' in the opposition party.
'Since we defeated their evil designs on July 10, their poaching approach became more aggressive with using blackmail and money power as tools to finish off the political opposition in Goa.'
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