Panaji, Jan 23 (TOI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assurance of resuming mining by arriving at a judicial solution has come 11 months too late, the Congress party said, adding that the BJP is trying to mislead mining dependants.

Modi spoke for the first time on Goa’s mining issue through video conferencing on Sunday. He assured people that the Centre would not lag in taking the “judicial route” in order to restart mining.

Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Girish Chodankar said the judicial route should have been mentioned months ago, before the mining dependants took to the streets, got lathi charged and more recently, protested in Delhi. Despite a battery of lawyers, including an attorney general and solicitor general, the party left the mining dependants in the lurch for 11 months, he said.

The three BJP MPs didn’t manage a meeting of even a single minute with the Prime Minister to discuss the mining issue he said.

“It’s a farce and a waste of time,” Chodankar alleged, adding, “They will go to court just before the code of conduct comes in and promise the mining dependants that the matter is in court and that a solution will be arrived at.

”Leader of the opposition Chandrakant Kavlekar said the BJP has no intention of resolving the mining problem and that he observed this when he was part of the all party delegations to Delhi last year. He alleged that the party was misleading the mining dependents.

Chodankar alleged that the entire eight-minute interaction on Sunday between Modi and mining dependants, was staged. Chodankar alleged that the questions posed by BJP workers were filtered and pre-planned. “The Prime Minister is scared to talk to the media, to the people and to his own party workers. The workers didn’t have freedom to ask the questions they wanted,” he said, adding that questions with no quality were asked.