LISA ANN MONTEIRO
PANJIM: As the BJP blows its trumpet heralding Narendra Modi’s visit, Merces farmers’ voices are being drowned. They were not intimated and their consent wasn’t taken when it was decided to hold the Vijay Sankalp rally on their fields at the Morombi-O-Grande Comunidade fields.
Around seven boundaries of their fields have been flattened to make way for the special road being built to transport dignitaries from the main road right to the stage.
The farmers rue that heavy vehicles passing through the field will harden it and tilling will become very difficult later. “We won’t be able to plough it until it rains. They have also removed the boundary marking and misplaced the stones. They have made provisions for toilets but they are only a handful. In the night people will surely urinate in the fields and this will damage them further. The CM hasn’t promised us any compensation but has told us to meet him on January 28 where he assured to give us some schemes,” they said. A total of 40 farmers’ land will be affected.
Secretary of the farmers and tenant’s association Blasio Vaz says the desperate and disgruntled farmers are approaching the association with their concerns. “How can anyone interfere with the fields without obtaining prior permission? The farmers are very angry and asking us for compensation but why should we compensate them? Nobody intimated us. Once the sluice gates get damaged and saline water enters the fields the farmers will really suffer. They have to compensate them in some way. Till now they haven’t been paid anything.” Not all the farmers are cultivating their fields, he said.
Apart from the main ground where the rally will take place, at least 15 fields are being filled for parking. Merces sarpanch Walter D’Souza is receiving complaints from locals about filling of various fields in Vaddy. He filed two complaints on Thursday, one with the police and one with the flying squad stating that some known persons were illegally filling land/fields in various places at Vaddy in Merces and asking them to take action.
“Authorities haven’t provided us with any map of the rally so we don’t know what is happening where. We don’t know whether the fields are being filled for the purpose of the rally or by miscreants,” he told this newspaper
