Team Herald
PANJIM: Has the Parsekar government been shocked into silence over the report of the fact-finding authority of Sandeep Jacques on whether tenanted land was illegally sold to leading Hotels for their five-star resort and golf course project at Tiracol?
Almost the whole of village Tiracol has been “bought” by Leading Hotels which has been challenged in a petition in the High Court by the St Anthony’s Tenants and Mundkars Association and backed by the Goa Foundation. If this challenge is upheld, the project, which will see the fall of Tiracol into private hands, by ousting the sons of the soil, will not have a legal ground to stand on.
The government reeling under pressure to come clean on the validity of the sale of land at Tiracol constituted the authority under Mr Jacques, the Executive Director of the Sports Authority of Goa (now promoted to the IAS cadre) with the same powers as a Mamlatdar/Agricultural Land Tribunal under the Agricultural Tenancy Act. Therefore this wasn’t an ordinary appointment. All the four terms of reference of this authority were related to finding out if the lands were tenanted or not.
The report was submitted to the Under Secretary Revenue (1) Ashutosh Apte well before the assembly session, in January. In a reply to a question raised in the assembly by Porvorim MLA Rohan Khaunte, about the contents of the report, the Deputy Chief Minister and Revenue Minister Francis D’Souza confirmed that the report was received and the government “was examining its contents”.
Sources in the Revenue Department have confirmed to Herald that the report is a “hot potato” and the government is not willing to touch it at this stage. The Assembly reply that the government is examining it is surprising.
While the formation of the committee was announced with a lot of fanfare, the submission of its report, over four weeks ago, has been completely silenced.
The order commissioning the inquiry stated, “The matter concerns a Hotel project of Leading Hotels (in reality this envisages the sale of high end luxury residential villas) coming up at Tiracol wherein the allegations basically pertain to purchases of tenanted agricultural lands by a Hotel-Company and then converting them for non agricultural purpose pursuant to the consent orders.”
Sandeep Jacques, Executive Director Sports Authority of Goa, was asked specifically to go into charges levelled in the writ petition of the St Anthony’s Tenants and Mundkars Association (SATMA).
The terms of reference for Sandeep Jacques, in the order of the formation of this fact finding commission were as follows:
– whether the lands were agricultural/ or tenanted lands
– whether allegations regarding tenancy made in the petition are true
– whether the persons (petitioners) were tenants of the lands (bought by Leading Hotels)
While the contents of the Jacques’ fact-finding report are being guarded very loosely, those who have had a glimpse of it (since the government has stated that it is examining it), indicate that it may have come to a specific conclusion that the land in Tiracol sold to Leading Hotels was fully tenanted, and hence could not be sold under the Agricultural Tenancy Act.
Herald did attempt to speak to Under Secretary Ashutosh Apte, the nodal officer who commissioned the inquiry and is in receipt of the report, but he wasn’t available. Herald expects an answer from him or Deputy Chief Minister Francis D’Souza as to what the contents of the report are and why the department has taken more than four weeks to examine the report and withhold it from the public.
