SANGUEM: It’s been four decades since they were displaced and had to forego their ancestral land for the construction of the Selaulim Dam. A group of Selaulim evacuees comprising 12 families residing at Dapodem Bhati-Sanguem, on Sunday threatened to come on the streets and boycott the upcoming Lok Sabha elections if the government fails to allocate them housing and agricultural plots as assured during the time of displacement.

At a meeting held at Dapodem, Sanguem, they said that since their ancestors were not available at home during the survey, the authorities had placed around 79 families under the category of missing families and had time and again the successive governments had assured them of housing and agricultural plots since their displacement.

Incidentally, when Jennifer Monserrate was the Revenue Minister, a deadline of 15 days was fixed to settle the issues faced by Selaulim evacuees. This assurance was followed by Revenue Minister Jennifer Monserrate and then Sanguem MLA Prasad Gaonkar’s personal visits to the rehabilitated colonies at Curdi-Wadem and a lot of paperwork followed since then. But the ground reality remained the same for a simple reason that the government is in no mood to settle the long pending demands of the Selaulim evacuees, they claimed.

At a meeting, South Goa BJP ST Morcha president Adv Anand Gaonkar claimed that the successive governments have taken the tribal community for granted and only used them during the elections. These people have rallied behind the BJP during elections but yet the government has failed to solve the primary issue of tribal people who sacrificed their ancestral land for the construction of Selaulim Dam.

Gaonkar said, “It is only because of the sacrifices made by these people that the whole of South Goa gets drinking water. Now, it’s time for the people of South Goa to support the Selaulim evacuees, who are yet to be provided with the promised land by the government even after 40 years of their displacement.”