CALANGUTE: The Calangute Village Panchayat on Tuesday decided to file a petition in the High Court of Bombay at Goa to bring a stay on the outline development plan (ODP) for Calangute and claimed that the plan has been made by vested interests for their benefit and is full of discrepancies.
Calangute sarpanch Joseph Sequeira said, “The ODP was drawn without consulting the people and does not reflect the ground reality. A special gram sabha of the Calangute panchayat was held recently to discuss the ODP during which the people in one voice demanded that the panchayat file a petition in the High Court to bring a stay on the ODP. We are in the process of getting all the documents ready and the petition will be filed in the next 8-10 days.”
“If you go to see from 1971 when the roads were planned by then TCP town planners and leaders of that time, the road from Siolim to Sinquerim was kept at 25 metres, but when this ODP was drawn up it was made 15 metres. This has been done by the ODP planners of the last 5-10 years. This has been done for their benefit because of their properties,” he charged.
“The Baga road which was 15 metres has been made 10metres. Because of this, the people are upset and have asked us to file a petition in the High Court to bring a stay on the ODP,” he said.
Sequeira said he had also opposed the ODP earlier when he was a panchayat member and had filed a petition in the Bombay High Court, but the subsequent panchayat body, which took over in 2017, had withdrawn the petition without even discussing it at the gram sabha.
