49 tenants of the land have issued notice through their lawyer revoking the all important Power of Attorney they granted to the company to take decisions on their land. It is on the basis of this POA that Leading Hotels were able to obtain ‘negative declarations’ from the courts that they were never tenants.

These negative declarations enabled the company developing the Golf Course and Villa project in Tiracol to get conversion sands and buy the entire village. The revocation of the power of attorney notices issued on Monday, makes it impossible for Leading Hotels to justify that they had bought the land without misleading or cheating tenants of their possessions.

“Leading Hotels have in a document issued an irrevocable power of attorney in the names one Ryan Semelhago and Sandeep Ganguly. There is no mention of the word irrevocable in The Powers of Attorney Act and is only a term coined by lawyers. In practice, any power of attorney is a document from one issued to another person and any person has the right to revoke this document,” said Nazareth.

It is in this regard that the advocate, on behalf of 49 tenants that had signed these ‘irrevocable POAs’, has written to Semelhago and Ganguly revoking all powers of attorney", said Advocate Bernard Nazareth, fighting the case for the villagers.

Documents obtained by Adv Nazareth show that Leading Hotels entered into a memorandum of understanding which they then used to start the process to declare the land as having no tenants. This, said Nazareth, is against the Goa Land Use Act that says withstanding any law or act or plan of the government, the land can’t be used for anything other than agriculture.

The tenants will also be taking the case to the civil court that issued an order on the negative declaration using, which the hotel claimed there were no tenants and that they were the sole owners of the land.

“The civil court has no jurisdiction in issuing a decree against matters that fall under the mamlatdar. This in itself is a violation of law,” Nazareth said.

Tenants were made to sign three documents – a power of attorney, a memorandum of understanding and an affidavit – using which Leading Hotels received orders for negative declarations from the civil court claiming sole ownership of the land from original land owner Ramakant Khalap.

Sarto D’Souza whose family was one of those that signed the power of attorney said he and the other tenants were disappointed with the way the hotel handled the issue.

“We feel we have been cheated and this is nothing but a fraud and we don’t want them on our land. They had promised one thing but did something else all together,” said D’Souza.