Panaji (Goa): As the fear of oil spill from the stranded off-shore casino vessel ‘Lucky 7’ in river Mandovi looms large, the authorities have stepped up all the precautionary measures including initiating salvaging operation and emptying the fuel tank.
“The salvaging operation will begin in the next couple of days. Until then, we are emptying around 12,000 litres of fuel from the vessel tank to ensure there is no oil spillage,” Captain of Ports James Braganza said.
The vessel, owned by Golden Globe Hotels Pvt Ltd, belonging to Haryana’s controversial ex-minister Gopal Kanda, hit the sand bar off Aguada Bay last weekend during its towing exercise and drifted towards the popular and most frequented Miramar beach.
The vessel had left the Mormugao Port Trust (MPT) on July 13 despite being warned about bad weather conditions by the Captain of Ports (Cop). The Captain of Ports had also filed an affidavit before the Goa bench of Bombay High Court that it was dangerous to even attempt to bring in the vessel till September 15. After nearly six hours of sailing, the vessel had to be forcibly anchored off Cabo Raj NIwas near the Aguada light house.
CoP sources said that the crew, including the sailors, made another attempt to tow the vessel on July 14 but it ran aground close to the Miramar beach blocking the river channel, and has since then been drifting towards the beach due to strong currents. If this was not it, the tow lines had parted in all the attempts from July 13 to July 16 and one of the chains of the anchor too broke resulting into a potential risk to the safety of the human lives and environment.
On Sunday, another tragedy struck when the Indian Coast Guard received a call to rescue the crew members who were in distress. Four crew members of whom three were sea sick and one injured were air lifted while the remaining 16 members preferred to stay back.
The entire fiasco had upset Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar who ordered to tow the vessel back to MPT. Similarly, Tourism Minister Manohar Azgaonkar warned to take strict action against the firm if the vessel in anyway affect the state tourism industry whereas legislator Nilesh Cabral slammed the casino operator for defying the CoP advisory which led to the present crisis.
However, the Aam Admi Party has hit out at the government with its leader Elvis Gomes stating, “Goa Govt’s love affair with casinos results in a hybrid of on-shore casino called ‘Lucky 7.”
The government, in the just-started monsoon session of the Legislative Assembly, is expected to grant three years’ time to the off shore casino operators to convert into land casinos as it plans to remove all the off shore casinos vessels from the highly congested river Mandovi.
Team TNV