Vijai Sardesai has said that domestic tourists are the “scum of the earth” and the efforts should be made to attract high-end tourists to the state. He also said that North Indians wanted to create a Haryana in Goa. (Facebook)

Goa Minister Vijai’s Sardesai’s comment on attracting rich tourists in the state has stoked a fresh controversy. According to The Indian Express, Sardesai has said that domestic tourists are the “scum of the earth” and the efforts should be made to attract high-end tourists to the state. Speaking at the Goa BizFest in Bambolim, Sardesai cautioned against North Indians who he said wanted to “create a Haryana in Goa”. He also contradicted Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s target to attract one crore tourists to Goa. Instead, he said that it is important to attract foreign and upper-class Indian tourists. Sardesai said he preferred a model where the rich visit Goa as a tourist destination, to benefit the state’s poor. “The trick is to attract the rich tourist. That stayed with me. It has left an effect on me. It’s an idea I always have had. It all goes back to what Sir Vivian Richards told me at a tourism meet…He said, we can have the best beaches, best architecture, best beauty, but if we don’t have a golf course, it amounts to nothing,” he was quoted as saying by IE. Sardesai is president of the Goa Forward Party which is part of the BJP government in Goa.

“Today we have almost six times population of Goa coming as tourists. Those tourists are not top-end tourists, they are also the scum of the earth. Are they responsible? They are not. If you compare Goans to rest of India, we are high in per capita income, social and political consciousness, we are much superior to people who are coming in. Those people, how you will control (them)? Can you control them?. We could control them at one point in time. But we jumped the Russians… We decided to put all eggs in one basket. The British have gone away. And, now we are dependent upon the north Indians and this is what they do. They are not bothered about Goa. They want to recreate Haryana in Goa,” said Sardesai.

That’s not all. Sardesai also then connected other states to the issues in Goa claiming that they are responsible for the problems in Goa today. Sardesai pointed to the quality of people visiting Goa as he listed the garbage problem in the state. In the past too, Sardesai has been vocal about his displeasure for the domestic tourist, and had called for a change in the state’s tourism policy and making Goa expensive for the domestic tourist.