TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: In a significant judgement, the Bombay High Court’s Goa bench on Tuesday set aside the regularization order of the Serula communidade land held by Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar on the CHOGM road at Porvorim.
The order was passed by a division bench comprising Justice R S Dalvi and Justice F M Reis in a public interest litigation which brought to the notice of the court the alleged encroachment on the 599 square metres land by Parulekar who is a cabinet minister in the BJP government.
The petition pointed to the blatant misuse and abuse of power in alleged connivance with his Under Secretary Irene Sequeira who was also the administrator of the Communidade of North Zone, and Peter Martins the attorney of the Comunidade of Serula who conspired to fraudulently hand over to the tourism minister the land at a throw away price in the guise of regularization, when he was in a position of power.
The petitioner also pointed out that the market value of the area encroached by Parulekar was more than Rs 1 crore and that the comunidade had illegally given it away to him for a mere Rs 3,41,320.
“It could not have been regularized under law. The entire process initiated for regularization commencing from the resolutions of the comunidade to the order of the administrative tribunal granting permission was void being entirely without jurisdiction and contrary to the Code of Comunidade,” the petitioner A Rodrigues argued.
