MARGAO: Chief Minister Pramod Sawant assured a delegation of Chinchinim residents that he will look into their demands for changes to be made in the alignment for the national highway expansion project which will pass through their village. The delegation comprising Chinchinim-Deussua panchayat members met the Chief Minister in Margao.
A wheelchair-ridden senior citizen urged the Chief Minister to consider their demands and lamented that people of Dandeavaddo were already displaced by the earlier land acquisition in the late 1980s
Sawant then informed the delegation that an appointment will be fixed in his office for further discussions.
“We appealed to the Chief Minister to intervene and give justice to the long pending demand of the people of Chinchinim to consider Alternate-1 as a proposal for by-pass road NH-66. The proposed bypass will avoid congested areas and will have a lot of scope for future expansion,” said sarpanch Valentino Barretto.
All the correspondence from the locals, the panchayat and the government offices which included prior plans of PWD were also submitted in the memorandum which was handed over to the Chief Minister.
It may be recalled that the Union Highway Minister Nitin Gadkari had in 2022 announced a Rs 300-odd crore package for the four-laning of the Navelim-Cuncolim stretch of the National Highway-66, which included a four-lane road with a paved pedestrian pathway and a flyover at the congested Dandeavaddo area of Chinchinim.
However, the local residents have raised their objections to this proposal on the ground that houses would be affected and demanded that the government consider their suggestions. They
had also argued that there was no space as per the alignment selected by PWD to carry out four-laning and to build a flyover.
Gram sabha resolutions were passed with the locals demanding that the government instead consider Alternate-1 as a proposal for bypass road NH-66. The panchayat delegation had also met Gadkari in Goa when he had inaugurated the first phase of the Zuari Bridge in December 2022 but received no relief.
