Congress Karyakarta Shibir

February 19, 2008

Dear Dolphy,

Congress Karyakarta Shibir

This evening Mr. Ajit Sawant invited me to attend the Congress Karyakarta Shibir at Mahim Municipal School, from 5.30 p.m. onwards. Earlier they had the inauguration of the Mahim Congress Office at 4.00 p.m. at the hand of Mr. Eknath Gaikwad, MP. Though they had mentioned that Mr. Gurudas Kamat was also to attend, he was not present.

I reached the above venue around 6.30 p.m. and was rather surprised to be offered a seat on the stage. There was a huge gathering of over 600 people. Different persons were asked to speak on their problems and success stories experienced through the Congress Party. They invited me to speak at about 7.25 p.m. I was introduced as a parishioner of St. Michael's and the Vice President of the Bombay Catholic Sabha. I began by reassuring the crowd that while I was no Congress activist, I certainly was a social activist and alert citizen. Initially I spoke as Rita D'Sa, the individual, expressing my happiness at the good work done by our local Corporator Ms Meena Desai and narrating some of our good experiences. Thereafter I spoke as a Vice President of the BCS and expressed our anguish as being treated as a minority among minorities and inquired why none of the benefits for minorities were being passed on to us Christians. I appealed to Mr. Eknath Gaikwad that the BCS has great expectations from him and his party MPs, since we are currently plagued with a number of serious issues, which we are dealing with. I hoped that they would soon have a dialogue with the BCS to help resolve some of the major issues. I expressed a grave concern that the party higher up did not seem to be concerned about resolving our Christian issues.

Thereafter I left the programme, which went on probably ending with a dinner for all who came.

Regards,

Rita D'Sa, Vice President, BCS

P.S. Herbert Barretto was also on stage and later Dr. Neil Abreo also came up and sat on the stage