MARGAO: The mood at the Lohia Maidan meeting was clearly anti Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardesai and the popular chant was “fott, fotting, fottingponn” contrasting with Goa Forward Party’s slogan “Goem, Goenkar, Goenkarponn”.

Every time any speaker referred to the TCP Minister as “Vijai Bab” the audience would chant “chor”. In fact one elderly man shouted down Arthuro D’Souza amidst his presentation and demanded that he stop calling Vijai “bab”.

The crowd that gathered at Lohia Maidan today was from all over Goa with groups coming from practically all the talukas and the groups came with their own placards that were held high whenever the name of their village was taken.

Felly Gomes, the compere, did an excellent job by motivating the crowd and enthusing them to whole heartedly participate in the singing and sloganeering.

The presentations prepared by Abhijit Prabhudessai and Swapnish Salkar of Rainbow Warriors enthralled the huge crowd. They compared the Regional Plan with the present google maps of the village and exposed how green areas including forest, hills, hill slopes, CRZ areas, fields existing today are proposed to be made settlement zone in the plan.

In fact as they kept moving the slides of one village to the other showing the markings of green areas as settlement zones, people chanted “kabar” (meaning finished). Known Vijai baiters from Fatorda like Ethel Lobo and Lawry Abranches could be seen and heard leading the diatribe against Vijai.

Xavier Almeida from Taleigao while pointing out that that his villagers have been fighting against concretisation for long, said “Manohar Parrikar can change everything even now though he is in New York with just one phone call,” but lamented that it was not going to happen.

Florence Rodrigues from Bogmalo said it was time for all Goans to be united and not follow the legendary crab mentality. “Neither our land nor we can afford skyscrapers as Goa will crush under it and we Goans will not be able to afford apartments there,” he added.

Taking a dig at the planning done by the government Cruz Rodrigues from Navelim opined that the Portuguese planning was far better and had withstood the test of time. “We can see the buildings constructed by the Portuguese still standing tall while the bridges constructed by our government collapse,” he said.

A tiatr artiste Victor D’Cunha sought to know why permission from the Town and Country Planning Department was needed when anybody wanted to sell a portion of his land and said this was not only another means of harassing the common man but also to promote corruption.

Captain Viriato Fernandes who was the only speaker to refer to Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar pointed out that he was known as a “U Turn” minister and took a nasty dig saying he did not want to say anything more about him as “he was presently a wounded soldier”.