VASCO: With the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee (CEC) scheduled to arrive in Goa on Wednesday, the State’s civil society has high expectations that the panel would come up with the factual data during its inspection and ensure that all three linear projects are scrapped.
On the CEC members visit to Goa, a place of natural splendour, Creson Antao, Goencho Ekvott convenor said, “The entire Goan population looks upon the learned committee members to help us in protecting our cherished environment and stop the destruction being planned by the present administration in the name of unplanned development.”
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“Also we would like to highlight a point is that the Forest Department is supposed to protect, preserve and take sustained efforts to safeguard our wildlife and biodiversity at large. But the present officers in Goa seem to be ignorant of the Forest and Wildlife Protection Acts as their priorities are to benefit the crony capitalists and the political establishment”, he charged.
“This is an extraordinary State, in more ways than one, a place where, perhaps more than anywhere else, sky, sea and earth meet. From horizon to horizon, it is a land of abundant richness. It is a land of confluences, where diverse strands meet and co-exist; and, in a time of apparently incessant strife and discord, it is still a mostly liberal land. It is a kind and gentle land, of kind and gentle people. And it is also a land that, given its small size and small population, has had a wholly disproportionate influence on our art, culture, language, music, literature, architecture, history, design and more (even food, for many of what we consider our staples first came from here). Its greatest asset is one: its environment and its ecology — its rivers and riverbanks, its beaches, its lakes and clear streams, its dense forests, its low hills and fertile fields, its boulders and even trees shrouded with moss and vines and lichen in the rains, its ridiculously brilliant sunsets. One needs only to turn off an arterial road to either east or west to see all this first-hand, and all of it within but a few minutes. It is because they perceive that there is something of value here to protect. To be sure, the government has before it a delicate balancing task of safe-guarding the environment and providing for development. These are, after all, struggles for a better tomorrow. This or that particular cause may be lost. But no cause should be allowed to be lost for want of trying. For this is something none can deny: this is a land truly worth fighting for,” Antao quoted the NGT order by Justice Patel and Justice Sardessai on Goa.
Antao said, “We, Goans shall continue to fight for sustainable development and especially the youth, who are on the streets fighting to get their share of peaceful and pollution-free life in Goa. We have inherited this beauty and need to handover it to the next generation and hence we have to preserve it for them. Goa, popularly known as the Pearl of the Orient and a tourist paradise, our hospitality is not a trend in the city, but it is a tradition that we follow without any remarks. Everyone coming to Goa gets himself attached to this place for its natural beauty”.
Orville Dourado Rodrigues, VACAD chairman and Goencho Ekvott founder said, “It is indeed heartening to learn that the high powered Supreme Court Central Empowered Committee (CEC) will conduct site inspections of the three destructive linear projects through Bhagwan Mahaveer Wildlife Sanctuary and Mollem National Park, thanks largely to Dr Claude Alvares of Goa Foundation.”
He said, “Hopefully, the CEC will spare some time to also inspect the current South Western Railway alignment through thickly populated areas of Salcete and Mormugao talukas to fully comprehend the misery that the natives along both sides of the existing tracks have to endure on a daily basis that is mainly used as a coal corridor for the benefit of much larger States, thus laying waste to our once vibrant countryside polluting our air and ground water sources, thus destroying our farmlands and heritage structures and most importantly take a toll on our health which can never be compensated.”
Goencho Avaaz co-convenor Swapnesh Sherlekar said, “I feel if this committee finds out actual facts and submit them before the court then it will be better. If this committee, which has been sent to find out the factual data, does its job sincerely then everything will happen right.”
“The present State government has suppressed the material evidences and factual data. If CEC does the fact finding then all three linear projects could be scrapped. If our rules and regulations, which are there to protect our nature and the Western Ghats, then all these rules will prove redundant. Therefore, I feel this committee should do their work in free and fair manner,” he said.
Abhijeet Prabhudessai of Goyant Kollso Naka (GKN) said, “We expect these three linear projects should be scrapped and cancelled as they have cumulative impact and also because the each project is a linear project. The study has to be as each linear project as a whole and the cumulative impact of three projects.”
He said, “Considering the people’s opposition, as well as the existing climatic crises which we are facing, I feel the CEC should completely reject all three projects that is what we expect. CEC is here to see about the wildlife clearances and we hope that clearances for all three projects are rejected,” he added.
