Team Herald
PANJIM: Bharat Mukti Morcha (BMM) on Tuesday condemned the decision of the Goa government to declare 82,595 sq mts of paddy fields, water bodies and khazan lands camouflaged as ‘orchard’ into ‘settlement’ to facilitate construction of a five star hotel and luxury villas by Ozone Leisure and Resorts Pvt Ltd.
Speaking to the media, BBM President Maggie Silveira termed the cabinet decision as a massive fraud.
Silveira, said that a complaint of fraud in Vanxim Association was filed by late Ligorio Silveira with the Mamlatdar of Tiswadi in April 1995. “The roots of this tragedy however are traced to brazen craze to liquidate Church lands all over Goa. BMM is not opposed to the Church nor to the Catholic faith, but is opposed to the existing nexus with real estate dealers,” she said.
Silveira said that late Mathany Saldanha, as minister in the BJP government, was opposed to the conversion of Vanxim paddy fields for tourism purposes. He had declared, shortly before his death, that the project would never come up in Vanxim.
BMM demanded the abolition of land titles granted to the company and revocation of the cabinet approval to declare Vanxim an Investment Promotion Area.
Activist priest Father Bismarque was in the forefront of the agitation against the project in Vanxim and died under mysterious circumstances, even as the struggle to stop the project to protect the village was going on.
