From Sanjay Borkar in Margao
for Daijiworld Media Network - Goa
Margao, Jan 21: Around 114 of 1000-odd third-year students of various colleges of Goa were arrested on Saturday on charges of unlawful assembly, while they were demanding supply of computers under “Cyber Age" Scheme. They were later released on personnel bond.
Over the last three days all these students were trying to have a meeting with state Education minister Luizino Faleiro, but they could not meet him as his (Faleiro's) personal assistant had told them that he was out of the state. For this reason, all the students had decided to meet him early in the morning of Saturday. So all the students gathered in front of his Borda bungalow. But here also the police cordoned off the area and prevented the students from entering the bungalow.
When students shouted slogans against the minister, education department and the Congress government, the minister called for a delegation of students to meet him and told them that he would take up the matter with the chief minister Pratapsingh Rane on Monday morning. He also invited the delegation to meet CM Rane along with him on Monday.
When the delegation came out and briefed about it the students' gathering outside, they marched towards the Collector Building with intension to block the roads of Margao city. They succeeded in blocking the national highway for 3 hours.
The police and district magistrate Deepak Desai first appealed to them to disperse, but when they refused to do so, he ordered their arrest under Indian Penal code sec 151 (Unlawful Assembly).
Students on their own boarded the bus and the buses were taken to Cuncolim Police staion, 14km from here and to Verna Police station, 10km from here. Annoyed with this, the students who were taken to Margao Police station demanded they be brought to Margoa. Then the formalities were completed.
Faleiro also lambasted the erstwhile BJP government which had given the promise and said that they had failed to provide computers to these students.
"If you are trying to put pressure on me, you go to hell," said Faleiro to the delegation when they asked him to give in writing that he would solve their problem.