Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar today sought to link shifting of the forthcoming edition of "Defexpo India" from Delhi to Goa to "local roots" of Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar even as he said that the new venue in South Goa is just "experimental".
The exhibition, formally known as the Land, Naval and Internal Homeland Security Systems Exhibition, will be conducted from February 17-20, 2016.
"It was only natural that Parrikar, the Defence Minister, would think of his home state when thinking where to shift the Defence Expo," Parsekar said.
He said the Naqueri plateau in South Goa, the venue of the event, was only an experimental venue for the event.
"These days some people are trying to create a controversy over the Defence Expo," Parsekar said.
Though Parsekar stressed about the local roots of Parrikar, the former Chief Minister of Goa, the defence sources had earlier said that a committee had selected Goa for the venue and it has nothing to do with the fact that Parrikar hails from the coastal state.
However, Parsekar said, "Defence Minister is the Goan son of the soil. Since Manohar Parrikar, the son of the soil, has reached such a position, we naturally felt that such an event should also be held in Goa".
The selection of the Naqueri plateau was opposed by civil society groups as well as the Congress.
Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Shantaram Naik had alleged that state government is planning to give the picturesque land "practically free" to Defexpo India to organise their defence exhibition shows.
"When the Goa government is not in a position to find 200 acres of land for establishing the proposed All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the state, what is the rationale in squandering away precious land to a purpose which Goa cannot digest?" he had said.
However, Parsekar tried to fend off the criticism.
"Just because the Defence Expo is being held there, it does not mean that we are giving away land to the Defence Ministry. Some are shouting hoarse that the land is gone. I am the chief minister of Goa, it is my prime responsibility to look after the concerns of Goa," Parsekar said.
The defence sources had said that the Indian Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO), the Ministry of Commerce and Industry body that owns the Pragati Maidan trade complex in Delhi where the exhibition was held till now, had conveyed to the Defence Ministry about the need to move out the show.
The Defence Expo 2016, is the ninth in the series of biennial Land, Naval and Internal Homeland Security Systems Exhibition organised by the Defence Ministry.
