The Indian state of Goa may have finally found a new location for its floating casinos to call home, but we’ve heard this story before.
On Friday, the Press Trust of India reported that Goa’s government had informed the state legislature that it was considering shifting the six floating casinos currently operating on the Mandovi river to a new home in Aguada Bay. The Bay is situated where the Mandovi river meets the sea near Goa’s capital Panaji.
Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar said the government was “seriously” looking at Aguada Bay, one of four possible new locations for the state’s shipboard gaming operators. However, Ports Minister Michael Lobo cautioned that the government was still conducting a survey of the location to determine its suitability.
The casino operators previously signalled their willingness to make the move if the government provided the necessary infrastructure, such as adequate dock space to load and unload passengers going to and coming from the casinos. Parulekar said the government was still looking at what needed to be done to meet these requirements.
Goa’s casino policy can charitably be described as muddled. For a couple years now, the publicly stated plan was to shift the floating casinos to a designated land-based gaming zone near a local airport. But the timeline for this plan keeps being postponed.
Meanwhile, the floating casinos have been operating on a seemingly never-ending series of six-month extensions. The latest of these extensions was granted in March, meaning the government only has until September until it will be forced to either kick the can down the road again or finally pull the trigger on a plan.
Ironically, Aguada Bay was the site where the ill-fated MV Lucky Seven floating casino got stranded on a sandbar near the popular Miramar beach while being towed to its mooring point on the Mandovi in 2017. The casino remained stuck for several months, after which it was finally towed in for repairs and its operators transferred their casino license to a new vessel. The repaired MV Lucky 7 finally relaunched this May.
