Goa Assembly Passes Law Banning Drinking, Cooking in Public Places

Individual offenders will now be fined Rs 2,000 for the offences, according to the amendment.

File image of Baga beach in North Goa.

(Photo courtesy: The News Minute)

The Goa Assembly on Thursday, 31 January, passed amendments to the Goa Tourist Place (Protection and Maintenance) Act, 2001, prohibiting drinking of alcohol and cooking in public places, including beaches.

Individual offenders will from now be fined Rs 2,000 for the offences, according to the amendment. If the offences are committed by a group, the fine has been hiked to Rs 10,000, the amendment states.

The amendment, tabled by Tourism Minister Manohar Ajgaonkar on Thursday, is aimed to "protect and preserve tourism potential of tourist places in Goa and to keep such places clean and free from nuisance".

The Goa Cabinet had on 24 January cleared the amendments, amid demands from travel and tourism industry stakeholders who had blamed the Tourism Ministry for a drop in quantity as well as quality of tourists visiting the state in recent times.

Earlier this month, Goa Deputy Speaker Michael Lobo had said there had been a decline in the number of tourists and blamed Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar for not imposing a ban on drinking alcohol on the beaches.

“Stop people from drinking on the footpath, on the promenades, on the beaches, breaking bottles,” Lobo had said in the Assembly.

“The minute you stop this, you will see that this crowd will stop coming to Goa. They don’t want to drink in a shack or a restaurant, because they know it is expensive. They just want to buy and come on the beach and get drunk and look at women,” he had said.

(With inputs from IANS)