The people dependent on the mining industry in Goa are hoping that their operations, which came to a standstill from March 16, will resume once Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar returns to the state. Parrikar, 62, is scheduled to return to Goa tonight after his over three-month-long stay in the US, where he had gone to undergo treatment for his pancreatic ailment.

"As Parrikar is slated to return, people feel that a solution for the mining crisis would be worked out," Puti Gaonkar, president of Goa Mining People's Front, an umbrella organisation of the people hit by the closure of mining industry in Goa, said. "All these months, the government was without a head and the three-member Cabinet Advisory Committee could not provide a solution for the mining crisis," he added.