Panaji: Goa MLA and former Chief Minister Churchill Alemao on Wednesday slammed the ruling BJP for facilitating the partial demolition of the Little Flower church in Delhi earlier this month.
"The construction of the church started in 2003 and was completed in 2005. In 2021, after 15 to 16 years, why was the church demolished?
"What was your Central government doing? When you have 15 MLAs from our community in your (Goa) government, only one MLA has given a statement," Alemao said in the Assembly, directing his charges at Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.
The demolition of the Church in south Delhi's Chattarpur area has become a sensitive issue in poll-bound Goa, where Christians account for around 26 per cent of the population.
The Congress as well as Alemao, the sole NCP legislator, has accused the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which runs the Delhi government, of doing little to prevent the demolition of the church.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who was in Delhi, had also called the demolition “shocking”.
“Churches are used as places of worship and a tense situation should not have happened at such a place of worship", he said.
Earlier, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, while in Goa on July 15, also indirectly blamed the BJP government in New Delhi saying he was told the demolition of the church was ordered by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) which comes under the Centre.
The DDA on the other hand denied having anything to do with the demolition.
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