Man claims foreigners 'avoiding' Goa; state responds with police complaint

The Goa tourism department has lodged a police complaint, alleging that entrepreneur Ramanuj Mukherjee 'disseminated false data' to 'undermine' Goa's image

The Goa government has filed a police complaint against entrepreneur Ramanuj Mukherjee after a post he shared on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), criticising Goa’s tourism experience, went viral.

 

The Goa tourism department has lodged a police complaint, alleging that Mukherjee “disseminated false data through his social media X handles, thereby causing significant annoyance to local businesses and inducing fear or alarm within the local community”, The Indian Express reported.

 

Mukherjee, associated with an educational learning platform Law Sikho, had said in this post: “Foreign tourists have abandoned the state already. Look at 2019 versus 2023 numbers. Russians and Brits who used to visit annually have opted for Sri Lanka instead. Indian tourists are still visiting, but soon likely to ditch it as word spreads about exploitation of tourists while there are so many cheaper comparable locations abroad.”

 

In the complaint, Goa’s Deputy Director of Tourism Rajesh Kale said that Mukherjee’s “actions may be part of a hidden agenda to undermine” Goa's image.

 

Mukherjee had also used data to back his claims by sharing inputs from ‘China Economic Information Center (CEIC)’. On this, the complaint read that the data credibility was questionable. It also read that Mukherjee’s post could have “potential ramifications for Goa’s tourism sector” and urged action against him.

 

In response to the complaint, Mukherjee said that he had merely shared the publicly available data. In a fresh post on X, he labelled the complaint as intimidation tactics by the authorities and said that they should have put out the correct data to counter him if they felt he was wrong.

 

“I will counter this intimidation through legal means,” he said further.