In the battle between development, investment, infrastructure and so- called progress on one hand, and the rights of the local people over their lands and the preservation of Goa’s resources on the other, the Goa government is increasingly choosing to side with the former and not with the proponents of people’s rights and preservations of our resources.
The Tiracol Golf Course and Villa project of the Leading Hotels is the most glaring example of this trend. While our investigations and sustained coverage has focussed on the manner in which the land was bought, the force used to fell trees and the boorish manner in which Leading Hotels has gone on to trample through the village to start project construction, we have now looked at how the state forest department, and one officer in particular has defied his call of duty and gone out of his way to report that density and quantity of vegetation and the area under forest cover on the project land of Leading Hotels, does not fall in the criteria of private forests.
The manipulation was so extreme that since the criteria couldn’t be changed, the findings were constantly altered by Mr M V Karkhanis, the Deputy Conservator of Forests (North) to depict the areas as not under private forests to allow conversion of land from agricultural to non- agricultural for commercial purposes. Since the details of his manipulation are in the two stories we have published in our Thursday and Friday editions this week (yesterday and today), we shall broadly outline them. The State Level Expert Committee (SLEC) of which Mr Karkhanis is a member have gone on field visits, where specific survey numbers pertaining to the Leading Hotels project were identified as private forests. Following this Mr Karkhanis insisted on a re–survey as the insistence of Leading Hotels. The re-survey – in the presence of Karkhanis - too found that 95% of the tree species were forest in nature. Following this Karkhanis immediately wrote to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests with a completely contrary view, stating that those specific areas did not conform to the criteria of private forests.
This is how he managed to ensure that permission to fell trees was given to Leading Hotels when the ground reality is that the SLEC has clearly found that these areas were private forests. Way back in 2013, in a matter of three days, he changed his own report on the canopy density of three survey numbers from 20% to 10% to ensure that the area does not fall under “private forests”(see today’s front page anchor story)
Karkhanis has behaved shamelessly. He has behaved as a stooge of Leading Hotels’ either on his own or under directions of someone higher up. Karkhanis has to answer if he was a mere pawn in the system or was he the lead actor. As a forest officer, he has behaved as a forest killing officer. As a protector of trees, he has turned out to be a butcher of trees. If he needs to win back even a semblance of respect he once had as a good, clean, efficient officer, he should explain under whose orders he was working. He has to tell the people of Tiracol if he was the butcher in control or were his actions dictated by bigger butchers. Remember they have butchered not just trees, but a village. They have played with people’s life and hacked their futures.
Look at Mr Laxmikant Parsekar and Environment Minister Alina Saldanha. While the minister has been a mute witness to the destruction of Tiracol, the Chief Minister has been responsible for it. And they call this “development”. If the Chief Minister justifies this by saying that Leading Hotels has invested in the state and thus cannot be driven away, the people of Goa will ask him “This land is our mother. Is the Chief Minster selling our motherland in this shameless manner for money? Do we even need this money?” On this auspicious occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi, please introspect Mr Chief Minister.