‘Our fight is everyone’s fight’: A diary of Goa’s six-day protest against land-regulation changes
· Scroll
At roughly 1 pm on February 25, in Panjim’s central Azad Maidan, it is 32 degrees. Under the dome of the main pavilion, MLA Viresh Borkar and activist Tushar Gawas are on Day 5 of a hunger strike. They are members of the Revolutionary Goans Party.
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Right by the giant brass urn containing the ashes of the Goan freedom fighter, Tristão de Bragança Cunha, they have set up a neat circle of mattresses, bottles of rehydrating fluid and fans. An image of Ambedkar and a copy of the Constitution of India are displayed prominently.
Members of their families and neighbours from their village of Palem-Siridao in North Goa have turned up in the state capital to support Borkar and Gawas but large signs around the pavilion discourage them from coming too close – a measure aimed at ensuring that the weakened hunger strikers do not catch any infections.
Borkar and Gawas had started their hunger strike on February 21 after police dragged Borkar out of the Town and Country Planning office in Panjim, where he and others had protested overnight against the implementation of Section 39A of the Goa Town and Country Planning Act, 1974, in their North Goa constituency of St Andre.
Section 39A, introduced through an...