Panaji, Dec 21 (IANS) No permission has been given yet for the three-day Sunburn Goa electronic music fest scheduled to be held Dec 27-29, state Home Minister Ravi Naik said Tuesday.
‘I have not received any file seeking permission for Sunburn festival. The festival cannot happen without a nod from the state home ministry. All beach parties have to take permissions from the home ministry,’ Naik told reporters on the margins of a state function.
Director General of Police B.S. Bassi has also said that the organisers of Sunburn Goa should not take government permission for granted.
‘By announcing the dates for the event they are presuming that they would be given permission by the home ministry. As of now, no such permissions have been given by the police department. We will look at it from a law and order perspective,’ Bassi said.
Earlier, three civic society groups demanded that the state administration should not permit the festival this year, because it gave Goa and the beach village of Candolim, which hosts it, a ‘bad name’.
‘A young girl, Meha Bahuguna, died at the festival because of drug overdose last year. Such festivals are giving Goa tourism and the village of Candolim a bad name,’ Tukaram Naik of the Candolim Nagrik Manch told a press conference.
Members of the Nerul Nagarik Kriti Samiti and the Reis Magos-Verem Citizens also backed his demands.
‘We have written to the state administration to cancel permissions and necessary approvals to conduct such a festival. Let the administration take the death of Bahuguna to its logical conclusion and bring to book those responsible,’ said Naik, a former sarpanch of Candolim.
Sunburn Goa, which will be held at Candolim beach, is expected to get some of the top names in the world of electronic music like Paul Van Dyk, Ferry Corsten and Dave Seaman.
The festival attracts thousands of revellers, mostly youngsters from urban India, who flock to Goa for the three-day event.
Bahuguna, a 23-year-old youngster from Bangalore, died of drug overdose last year at the Sunburn festival. After a post-mortem revealed that she had died of drug abuse, the police had questioned the organisers of the event.
