Sea Food Festival shifted to Colva beach

| 16 December 1998 23:08 IST

The much-delayed food festival of Goa, which was held on the Miramar beach in Panaji all these years, would be now held at Colva beach in South Goa from 13 January onwards.

The five-day long food and cultural festival, held in the evening and concluding at midnight, was attracting huge crowd of around 25,000 every day at Miramar, especially because of the charged atmosphere in the open space, surrounded by liquor and food stalls.

Thousands of people, locals as well as tourists, were enjoying the festival in a free atmosphere with bottles in their hands and food of all kind, while dancing at the tunes of folk, Indian as well as western music.

The state government however was forced to shift the venue from this year as the Miramar residents strongly objected to the noise pollution it caused while also creating all kind of inconvenience due to heavy traffic and haphazard parking of vehicles.

The scheduled dates in November had thus to be postponed indefinitely as the authorities could not find a proper place to hold it elsewhere in Panaji. Tourism minister Joaquim Alemao, who took over recently in the new Congress government, has now decided to hold it at Colva beach, in his Benaulim constituency.

The festival however would be held not on the beach but in the coconut grove, informs tourism director Ulhas Kamat. He is planning around 37 stalls of food, liquor, soft drinks and ice-cream etc, besides a huge stage to be erected for cultural programmes. Whether tourists would remain in Goa till then however is still a question.

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