With Sanjit Rodrigues, former commissioner out of the Corporation of the City of Panjim (CCP), a section of Corporators are now all set to ask for an inquiry into the double role played by Rodrigues who was also the managing director of Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC) during the tendering of the Miramar-Dona Paula road concretization.
Sanjit Rodrigues who held sway due to his closeness with the people in power found himself being moved out and replaced with Dipak Desai, another controversial officer who was arrested for his alleged negligence leading to the Ruby residency collapse in Canacona.
Mayor Surendra Furtado has however maintained that he is not aware of any such move, preferring instead to say, “My aim is for the development of Panaji, people are having very high hopes from me, I want to deliver it to people, so I will remain working towards the development instead of going behind somebody” Furtado said.
Rodrigues in his capacity as Commissioner had given permission to the GSIDC for the construction of the road worth Rs 72 crore whereas the entire stretch was hot mixed just a few months earlier spending Rs 1.3 crore.
Furtado had challenged the permission given to the GSIDC by his commissioner and also demanded for the revocation of the permission. But Rodrigues who was wearing two hats – that of the Commissioner of the CCP and MD of the GSIDC – had managed to go ahead with the project.
Social activist Aires Rodrigues had also approached Bench of Bombay High Court in Goa through Public Interest Litigation (PIL) mentioning gross violations and waste of public funds.
It was Rodrigues versus Rodrigues in the Court. Aires had argued that while the election code of conduct was in force, the Commissioner of the Corporation of the City of Panjim Sanjit Rodrigues, also the Managing Director of the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC), issued a NOC dated April 2, 2014, to GSIDC, a corporation he also heads, to take up the concretization of the road without consulting the corporators.
The court’s attention was also drawn to the fact that the government had earlier concretized a portion of a road at Cuncolim at a cost of Rs 5 crore and the road developed huge cracks so much so that the concrete had to be removed and the road hot mixed once again at a cost of Rs 3.15 crore causing revenue loss. Stating that there was no reason whatsoever to dig up a freshly laid and hot-mixed road thereby squandering a sum of Rs 1.3 crore in the process and to spend a further sum of Rs 66 crore in concretizing the road, the petitioner alleged that this was a gross misuse of power and daylight theft and wastage of public funds.
Now that Sanjith Rodrigues is no longer CCP Commissioner, he is likely to face the ire of impatient corporators over the delay and over expenditure of projects of the GSIDC in the capital.
