LUIZINHO QUITS RAJYA SABHA
LUIZINHO Falerio who joined the Trinamool Congress with great fanfare on the eve of the last elections has now given up his membership of the Rajya Sabha. Luizinho was appointed a Rajya Sabha member of the TMC as a reward for campaigning for the party in the assembly elections.
And now he has also quit the primary membership of the Trinamool Congress. It is expected that Luizinho, who has been very close to the Sonia Gandhi family may rejoin the Congress anew and contest the South Goa Lok Sabha seat in the 2024 parliamentary election.
HC SLAMS DGP AND CS
THE Goa bench of the Bombay High Court has passed strictures against Director General of Police Jaspal Singh and Chief Secretary Punit Kumar Goel. Despite repeated orders passed by the High Court the DGP has failed to take action against illegal sand mining. Sand is in great demand by the construction industry and a lot of Illegal sand mining river beds and beach fronts goes on rampantly. All this has been detected on CCTV cameras placed at various river jetties. Needless to say such mindless sand extraction can lead to a lot of environmental damage but few of the natural resource exploiters give a damn, ditto for the law enforcers who remain deaf, dumb and blind or so to speak – to the larger detriment of the state of Goa.
AMUL BARRED FROM KARNATAKA
THE Nandini Milk Co-operative Society which dominates the Karnataka dairy business has got the government to block the sale of Amul milk and dairy products in Karnataka. Nandini has its own huge market and in fact turned down a merger offer from Amul. Amul has protested to the Centre against its ban in Karnataka. However, it seems both the state of Gujarat which is the home of Amul, and Karnataka’s Nandini are ruled by BJP politics. How this economic and political stalemate will be resolved is left to be seen. In the meantime Karnataka residents may come to Goa to buy Amul if they wish!
PROTECTING FREE SPEECH
BOMBAY airport has rejected a petition objecting to the appointment of a “fact-checking” panel to identify false and misleading information. There have been strong objections to both Central and State governments setting up fact-checking authorities. Fact-checking should be by an independent authority and not the government. Media people and media organisations cross the country has objected to the fact-checking panel of the Press Information Bureau and Department of Information & Publicity. The court has stressed that any cases to do with the right to free speech should be taken up on an urgent hearing basis.
FAKE CALL CENTRES
GOA seems to have become notorious for a large number of fake call centers. Most of these call centers have been set up by people outside Goa. They have been collecting financial details of senior citizens in the US and misusing the information. This year the Goa police have closed down at least 10 call centers. In the latest case the Crime Branch police discovered a fake call center at Colvale defrauding senior US citizens by impersonating customer service representatives for online shopping. You are warned to be careful while you are doing online purchasing, it is something more and more people are doing.
RECORD EXPANSION FOR IHCL!
It’s been another year of expansion for Indian Hotels Ltd, the country’s largest hospitality company. The company recorded an industry-leading pipeline with the signing of 36 new hotels and opening 16 new hotels, currently standing at 73 hotels.
Commenting on IHCL’s growth on April 10, 2023 Managing Director and CEO Puneet Chhatwal said, “IHCL has witnessed a tremendous year of growth with unprecedented momentum of portfolio expansion. We signed a record 36 hotels in this financial year taking our portfolio to 260 properties. With this growth our managed hotels have now reached a share of 50% from 32% five years ago, resulting in a balanced portfolio mix. This was supported by a fast-paced opening of 16 new hotels. With its iconic brand Taj, IHCL maintains its lead in the luxury segment with 81 hotels in operation and another 17 in pipeline, while the young brand SeleQtions is capitalizing on many conversion opportunities. Vivanta and Ginger have added notable number of hotels and destinations providing consumers with newer choices.”
Executive Vice-President—Real Estate & Develoment, Suma Venkatesh added, “The robust performance is a testament to power of IHCL’s reimagined brandscape. We would like to thank all our owners and partners in reposing their trust in us!” With eight new hotel signings, the iconic luxury brand of the Taj is slated to reach the 100-hotel milestone soon.