By Mayabhushan Nagvenkar
Panaji, May 6 (IANS): The five glitzy offshore casinos anchored in the Mandovi river, which are now contemporary landmarks in the state's capital, will be shifted upriver to other locations, even as an anti-corruption outfit claimed that five more casinos could soon be given operating licences.

Speaking to IANS on the sidelines of a tourism ministry event here, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, whose Bharatiya Janata Party had vouched to rid Goa of casinos as a pre-poll promise, dodged questions over whether his government would grant licences to more casinos, in addition to the dozen-odd gambling facilities already functioning in the state's five-star hotels.

Asked to respond to a charge by NGO Generation Next that one more offshore casino and four onshore casinos were in the process of being licensed by the BJP-led coalition government, Parsekar said: "Not at all, at least not in the Mandovi... Even we are planning to shift this in the interior elsewhere".

Asked specifically if his government would grant licences to more casinos, Parsekar cryptically said: "No additional offshore casinos," refusing to comment on whether more onshore casinos would be allowed.

Goa, one of the top beach and nightlife tourism destinations in the country, first opened up to casinos in the late 1990s under the then Congress regime, which amended the Goa, Daman and Diu Public Gambling Act, to provide licences to one offshore casino and a string of five-star hotels.

In its 2007-12 stint in power, the Congress once again granted licences to seven more offshore casinos, of which only four now survive.

Additionally, nearly a dozen onshore casinos operate out of Goa's five-star resorts. According to government data, the onshore and offshore casinos annually contribute nearly Rs.125 crore (approx $20 million) to the state's treasury.

Ahead of the 2012 state assembly polls, the BJP, which had led a sustained campaign against the casino industry for several years, had promised that if voted to power, its government would rid the Mandovi river of the casinos.

After coming to power, then chief minister Manohar Parrikar and now his successor Laxmikant Parsekar however did a u-turn on the promise made in the BJP poll manifesto, by insisting that the casinos will have to stay put because of the quantum of revenue they contributed to the state's coffers.

Soon after his appointment as chief minister in November last year, Parsekar even said that doing away with casinos would send a wrong signal to future investors of casinos in Goa. The casino about-turn has been a subject of much public criticism.

Last week, an anti-corruption NGO said at a press conference that the BJP government was all set to grant licences to four onshore and one more offshore casino.

"This is a fraud committed by the BJP government with the people who elected this dispensation to power," Generation Next president Durgadas Kamat said. The allegation came a day after a spokesperson for the home ministry, the licensing authority for casinos, said that a floating hotel with an in-house casino had received in-principle clearance.

"The licence for the floating casino is not a new one. We are only transferring an existing licence to the floatel (a floating hotel, the first in the state) owned by the same casino company," a home ministry official told IANS, requesting anonymity.

Goa attracts every year nearly three million tourists, of whom several thousand account for the footfalls in the casinos.