The Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party has passed a resolution to name the upcoming Mopa airport in Goa after the state’s first chief minister late Dayanand Bandodkar, MGP president Deepak Dhavalikar said. The MGP, Goa’s oldest regional party, has two MLAs in the 40-member state Assembly and is currently supporting the Pramod Sawant-led government.
Even as the Mopa airport in Goa is set to be commissioned next month, political leaders are at loggerheads about whom the facility should be named after, but the state government has maintained silence on the issue. Dhavalikar said the MGP’s central committee on Sunday passed the resolution to name the Mopa airport after Bandodkar and it would be sent to the state government for a follow-up.
He said it would be a befitting tribute to former CM Bandodkar who had shaped the future of the state after its liberation in 1961 from the Portuguese rule. Notably, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Goa unit spokesperson Savio Rodrigues recently said the new airport should be named after Dr Jack Sequeira, the first leader of opposition in the state Assembly.
There was no better tribute to the man who saved Goa’s identity when some political leaders wanted to merge the state with Maharashtra, Rodrigues had said.Chief Minister Pramod Sawant had on Friday said the airport at Mopa in North Goa would be commissioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after December 8, depending on the availability of his dates.
