According to sarpanch Hilario Figueiredo, after several deliberations, a joint meeting between Panchayat Minister Rajendra Arlekar, RDA Minister and Cortalim MLA Alina Saldanha along with the panchas was held recently.
“Various questions were raised regarding the demand for bifurcating the panchayat, for which we gave an appropriate reply saying that we have over 79 industries (details up to 2001) in the village, declared as independent revenue village, fulfilling all conditions for formation of a separate panchayat such as population, number of voters, area, total number of houses (over 1100 plus), income and industrial grants etc. However, in terms of development, Quelossim is backward as compared to Cortalim,” he informed.
He said, “The panchayat minister has now directed the village body to submit new data with all relevant statistics, which can justify our demand for a separate Quelossim panchayat”.
Figueiredo further stated, “In the past, the process of notifying Quelossim village as a separate panchayat had been approved at various
levels, including the law department, and had reached the stage of notification. However, then chief minister Manohar Parrikar put a note on the said file and rejected the bifurcation proposal. Since then, till date, we have been striving hard to get our demand fulfilled. Now that we have got another opportunity to present our case, we are hopeful that our demand would be met soon”.
