MARGAO, JAN 6
After showing undue haste to acquire land admeasuring 30,000 sq meters of Communidade and private land at Sonsodo by invoking the urgency clause, the government seems to have suddenly slowed down its pace to acquire the land for the proposed kabrastan for the city’s Muslim population.
If officials are to be believed, it’s now more than two months since the land acquisition office had proposed to the government to notify section 6 of the Land Acquisition Act to acquire the land in question. Till date, however, section 6 has not been invoked by the government, creating doubts in the minds of the officials and the Muslim populace about the motive behind the mysterious delay.
Sources in the know say that while the Margao Municipal Council appears in a hurry to acquire the proposed land, the Civic body has failed to realize that nearly half the portion of the total land belongs to a private party which has strongly opposed the acquisition of their ancestral land tooth and nail.
It is also not clear whether the Margao Civic body have complied with all the formalities relating to acquisition of land. In fact, Herald had pointed out that the Margao Civic body had resolved at its monthly meeting to acquire only the land belonging to the Margao Communidade and had made no mention of any proposal to acquire the land belonging to a private party.
It is not out of place to mention here that the Land Acquisition office had put for acquisition the land belonging to a private on a letter from the then MMC Chief Officer Y B Tawde without any resolution or backing from the City Fathers.
Interestingly, while the Margao Municipality and the government appears hell bent in acquiring the Communidade and private land for the proposed Kabrastan, the city’s Muslim population appears totally opposed to the Sonsodo site.
In fact, the Sonsodo site has not even gone well with the section of Muslim community owing allegiance to the Congress party, but their pleas to drop the land acquisition at Sonsodo and acquire land at Aquem as per the Goa Assembly Resolutions seems to have no takers either with the Chief Minister Digambar or the Congress government in general.
Incidentally, as already reported by Herald, the Congress Minority cell had taken up the issue with Union Minister for Minority Affairs Salman Kursheed during his visit to Curtorim on Sunday and are now hoping against hope that the government would address their two-decade old demand for a burial ground.
