CASARVARNEM: A 25-member Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) team led by State Convenor Elvis Gomes was stopped by Goa Police as they tried to enter the Mopa greenfield airport construction site to investigate alleged mass scale tree cutting.
The tree cutting is in violation of the High Court of Bombay at Goa’s order of April 25, 2018 in the matter of Federation of Rainbow Warriors vs Deputy Conservator of Forests and Others which explicitly listed that “No steps as contemplated in clause (2) that is cutting of trees etc and the further clauses of this order will be taken”.
The fact-finding team had visited the site after being tipped off by locals that a large number of trees were being cut. “We heard the unmistakable sounds of many chainsaws cutting trees,” AAP’s Siddharth Karapurkar confirmed.
The AAP team was stopped from entering the site to investigate matters further by the Goa Police team stationed at the Mopa police outpost. AAP was accompanied by residents of the area who claimed that tree felling was rampant despite the High Court orders and the company building the airport was excavating earth and burying chopped trees at the site itself.
“It’s a sad reality that there is no transparency in what was happening. Hundreds of migrant workers are employed to cause mass destruction of trees and they get in and out of the massive construction site with heavy and medium vehicles and we Goans are prevented from going into this land by the police. How can this situation be described other than by calling it another invasion of Goa?” Gomes said, who was joined in the chorus by others present denouncing the government as well as the opposition for selling a huge chunk of 95 lakh square metres of land and an equally big surrounding area to private corporate interests.
Heated exchanges were witnessed between Karapurkar (also a petitioner from the Rainbow Warriors whose petition stopped tree cutting by High Court) and GMR officials who claimed that required permissions had been obtained but failed to produce any.
Even Goa Police personnel at the site agreed that trees were indeed being felled but refused to stop the work. They, however, assured that the company would be asked to produce the requisite permissions.
“The entire official machinery right from the police to the Collector and Forests are on the payroll of GMR,” alleged Karapurkar.
The clandestine operation was witnessed by other AAP members and media personnel as the face of anti-Mopa airport resistance Sandeep Kambli showed the massive destruction.
