Congress workers stage midnight protest at Goa hotel to meet Javadekar

Panaji: Nearly a dozen Congress workers, including vice president Sankalp Amonkar, were detained by the police in Panaji for protesting outside a five-star hotel, where the Union Minister for Environment and Forests Prakash Javadekar was putting up for the night.

The workers were demanding a meeting with the Union Minister.

The incident occurred just after midnight on Friday. Javadekar is in Goa to conduct meetings with the farmers' groups over the controversial farm laws which were passed by Parliament recently.

"JUNGLE RAJ in Goa - @INCGoa delegation led by Vice President @SankalpAmonkar @JanaBhandariGoa @varadmardolkar @AdvArchitNaik @RautMeghashyam @SudinNaikGoa & 10 others arrested by @DGP_Goa for seeking appointment with @PrakashJavdekar & waiting to meet him in hotel lobby in Panaji," Chodankar tweeted after the Congress leaders and workers were rounded up by the police and detained at the Panaji police station.

Speaking to reporters, as the opposition party workers were being taken away to the police station, Amonkar said that the Congress delegation had arrived at the hotel here, to meet Javadekar and seek a formal appointment to discuss the Mhadei inter-state river water sharing issue.

"We are being arrested just because we want to seek an appointment with a Union Minister," Amonkar said. The Congress had in the past accused Javadekar of being partial to Karnataka, one of the two other states which are a part of the river water sharing dispute, over the Mhadei issue.

Police, however, said that the Congress workers were arrested because they insisted on meeting Javadekar in the dead of the night. "It was a preventive arrest only, to avoid a law and order situation from occurring," a senior police official said.