Goa church unhappy with govt's move

The Goa church’s decision to target the Congress for corruption helped turn the tide convincingly in the BJP’s favour in the recent election. But it hasn’t taken long for cracks to surface in the tenuous relationship between the saffron party and the Goa Catholic clergy.

The church has been closely tracking the new chief minister’s moves on the issues of education and the delimitation of wards for the panchayat elections, and both seem to have made it uneasy.

In a memorandum to Governor B V Wanchoo, the church’s Council for Social Justice and Peace said it suspected fraud and manipulation in the delimitation of wards for the panchayat elections by the state government.

It asked the governor’s office to intervene to ensure that the panchayat elections were free and fair.

The elections to 184 panchayats held on Wednesday saw a huge voter turnout of over 80 per cent.

More crucial for the church, which runs over 160 affiliate schools in Goa, is the government decision on the medium of instruction which has been pending for months.