BHOMA: A 60-meter-wide road for the Highway expansion project at Bhoma has shrunk the hopes of a proper future of Bhoma residents; their land has been acquired from their non-resident landlords
They blankly stare at the road adjoining which their lives and their universe have existed for centuries. And feel that their future has been sold by their absentee landlords to the government
Goa has bought the future of the villagers of Bhoma from absentee landlords leaving the century-old residents to fend for themselves.
The villagers have flayed the government and PWD for alienating them from the village where they stayed for over 200 years.
Putu Gawade a senior citizen from Bhoma said that a notice was published in a sparsely circulated vernacular newspaper notifying the widening work of the road.
It is only when their names appeared as tenants in the columns of the land the villagers realised that their houses would be axed for a 60-meter-wide road. This road that passes right from the centre of the town hall is according to locals set to destroy their livelihoods, and businesses and render them homeless.
“Not one attempt has been made to explain to us how and why the road is being widened from the centre of the village when there are already two alternate sites for a bypass road acquired,” said Putu Gawade.
Shankar Gawde reminded, “It is the fourth generation of our family living in the ancestral house and making a livelihood here. We have been here even before a proper road was built.”
According to the villagers, the current alignment will not just take out the houses but also the cultivations, sacred water bodies and grooves nearby.
“As a result, women in the village have reasserted their pledge to lay down their lives to save the village,” Laxmi Bhomkar, a local village woman, said.
“Politicians have been coming to meet us and requesting us to vote for them. However, no one came ahead and assured support to us in our fight,” she added.
By attempting to dislodge the residents from their lands and houses the government in a way has contravened the tenancy act by only consulting the landlords of the lands in Bhoma.
