The judiciary in Goa is being regularly forced to intervene and direct action on issues of pure civic or village governance. As we report and comment on the rapid urban decay which also encompasses urban villages, it is being increasingly noticed that Courts have been approached to contest government actions that are anti- people and squander public funds.
After a prolonged battle, to stop the “butchering” of the Miramar-Dona Paula stretch of the once gorgeous connector between Panjim and its posh suburbia, there is finally a glimmer of hope with a division bench of the High Court ordering a stop to further digging of the road till its next hearing four days later. But this is a significant crack in the door because this order was based on the following three arguments a) Public money of Rs 84 crores and counting is being squandered on a road in the name of Panjim’s beautification as per a master plan which has not been shared with the “Corporation of the City of Panaji” b) A four lane road is being reduced to just one stretch where influential Panjimites live, to three lanes and c ) the sewage line built at high cost will now be covered with concrete thereby denying access when repairs are needed. The GSIDC, the nodal agency for this project, as for most projects, and not the CCP, has argued against the first and the third point saying that the master plan is not secret document and arrived at after wide spread consultancy and that there will be enough ducts to access the sewage lines if required. It has kept totally quiet on the point of lane reduction.
While these micro points will be used as bricks to build up the argument and the defense, the Court’s order to stop digging signifies that there is suspicion about the process deployed for this project. Questions will be asked, when hitherto all questions were dealt with dismissive responses, on the jurisdiction and authority of the GSIDC to bypass the Corporation, consisting of elected members. The government has another option. Bring in legislation to hand over power to a body like the GSIDC to execute and plan Panjim’s development. Bit till that happens, the Courts will ask questions, if not now but at some point of time.
This is also happening in the constituency of the Chief Minister who is clearly playing the bureaucracy to keep the Mayor as a shouting spectator, with the CCP Commissioner Sanjith Rodrigues running both the institutions in a bizarre concentration of power. With Rodrigues’ trapped in the floods in Jammu and Kashmir, in the middle of a family holiday, decision making in the CCP is in a trap.
Ultimately there are no sides to take in this battle except one side. Of transparency, the rule book and spirit of local self governance, all three read and executed together. Won’t it be an embarrassment that a mammoth white elephant of a project, fronted by the Chief Minister and local MLA, gets a stricture from the Court because it didn’t follow guidelines for the benefit of the public.
But as we mentioned, this virus has spread to every urban body which feeds off the funds it gets for its own. Margao, Vasco, Mapusa and Ponda are all afflicted where keys of projects are in the hands of a select few with the aim of not completing them. Goa hopes that the Miramar Doina Paula road case will mark a new height of judicial intervention where the executive has failed.
