Samir kelekar wrote: 1) The attack on NRGs and Rajan was in response to Rajan's attack on Oscar which appeared in Herald. Response: This shows that Oscar Rebello, you and your father have one common link, Digambar Kamat. Since Oscar played Footsie with him, since you are hoping to get sops from him and since your father heads a unique NGO that has the head of goa government as one of the officebearers and had has received hundreds of thousands of rupees from a debt ridden government, it is not surprising that you have to show solidarity with Oscar.
2) My point was that Rajan being a US citizen has been an opportunist person and now he wants to interfere in Goan politics. I stand by the fact that as a US citizen he has no political rights in India and needs to change his citizenship. Obvioulsy, none of the NRGs even talked about the latter point, probably because opportunists dont consider that important. I indeed even went to the extent saying that Rajan would be a hero if he changed back his citizenship and plunged into fixing Goa. How about discussing this aspect of it? Can one for instance have a Portuguese citizenship and get politically involved in Goa ? Response: I did respond to this point. Probably it was difficult for you to understand. I gave you my own example, which I will repeat: I hold Indian citizenship. I do not have voting rights in India. However, I do have political rights in India. I do have voting right for council, parliamentary and European elections in the UK. The point is: you should not confuse voting rights with political rights. Rajan, like me pays taxes in India, has property in goa and has OCI. This does give him political rights even if he is not allowed to vote because of vagaries of rules of Indian government. Manmohan singh has publicly promised to change this before 2014. It is therefore pointless for you to divert attention from the sterling work that Rajan has done with a documentary that he produced without any government grant and also his successful PIL. 3) The point about the Anil Desai conversation which again Jose harps on again and again. The conversation is there in the archives for anyone to say. Anil attacked my father's credentials and he was promptly responded to. Response: I do not know your father and I have not attacked your father's credentials. I did raise the point about MARG. You accepted that it has just appointed the Chief Minister of goa government as an office bearer. This makes MARG a unique NGO. You also accepted that this NGO has received hundreds of thousands of rupees from goa government. Goa has one of the highest mortality from road traffic accidents and these figures have largely remained high. So, it would be nice to know what credible change this organisation has brought to road safety in goa. When I asked about grants, you pointed me to a website that gives very little info on expenses. So, your response left a lot to be desired. Anil Desai PS: For the purpose of this post on this forum, I am a saffronite. I might even have have been trained to hate catholics during my early years although I do not have clear recollection of this.
