Accusing elements linked to the Goa’s influential Roman Catholic Church of trying to polarise Goa’s voters ahead of the August 23 bypolls, the BJP in Goa on Wednesday ridiculed the charge that India and Goa were headed towards Nazism, while also punching holes in a “fact-finding” report of a Church-backed NGO which accused the police and State administration of being insensitive towards minority communities.

In its first formal rebuttal of the Nazism charge levelled in an article published in the Renovacao, a pastoral magazine published from the official premises of the Goa Archbishop, BJP spokesperson and Curchorem MlA Nilesh Cabral said, “What is Nazism. Who were Nazis. Hitler was part of that. At that particular Germany was almost 100 per cent... 90 per cent Roman Catholic, which is there in Goa”.

“A similar Nazism was at that time popular in Germany, where 100 per cent almost Catholics supported by the Church.  So what are they trying to say. What are they giving in this magazine,” Cabral added.

The article, which was released in the latest edition of the Church magazine, which was released two days before the August 23 by-polls, had stirred controversy, but the BJP State leadership, including Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar were reluctant to comment on it.

“In 2012, everyone thought in terms of having a corruption-free Goa; this thinking continued till 2014, but from then and increasingly everyday what we are witnessing in India is nothing but a constitutional holocaust. Corruption is very bad, communalism is worse, but Nazism is worse than both,” the controversial article said.

“Anybody who read William Shirer’s ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ or Allan Bullocks’ ‘A study of tyranny’ or Hitler’s own ‘Mein Kampf’ will find an extraordinary identity between the growth and rampage, of Nazism in Germany in 1933 onwards and India in 2014,” it further said.

Cabral also criticised the findings of a fact-finding report co-authored by the Council for Social Justice and Peace, a Goa Church-backed NGO and the Mumbai-based Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, which had demanded a court-monitored probe into the series of desecrations of Catholic and Hindu icons in Goa and accused the state police as well as the administration of trying to cover-up the investigation.

The report, which was once again released on the eve of the by-polls had accused the State Government of turning a blind eye to hate-speeches made a Sadhvi during a conclave held in the State.

“Who is the fact-finding committee and who gave authority to the fact-finding mission.

The police are already doing a good job. It was wrong trying to polarise the votes before the elections,” Cabral said.

After winning the Panaji by-polls, Parrikar had also  come down heavily on the fact-finding report.

“All methods were tried, legal, media, social media and bad publicity. Even to the extent that two days before the elections, some organisation released a false fact-finding report. I am calling it false, because you will realise in the coming days, because government goes by the police investigation...” Parrikar had said.