Joaquim assures to scrap acquisition of paddy fields

Joaquim assures to scrap acquisition of paddy fields
HERALD REPORTER
MARGAO, FEB 9  
Smiles returned on the faces of farmers in Urban Development Minister, Joaquim Alemao’s home constituency of Cuncolim when the MLA assured to scrap acquisition of cultivated paddy fields for an administrative building opposite the bus stand.
The Urban Development Minister rushed to the Cuncolim Municipal Council after the farmer Vishnu Bikaro Desai and his family went on an indefinite hunger strike this morning outside the civic building.
Vishnu told newsmen that he and his family has resorted to the hunger strike as his plea to stop the land acquisition process and return the lush green fields fell on deaf ears of the authorities and the powers that be.
Eighty-year old Vishnu contended that he and his family had been cultivating the fields and the produce has been his only sources of livelihood.
Alemao later told newsmen that he has requested Vishnu and his family to withdraw the strike assuring that the civic body would scrap the land acquisition proceedings and the proposed project. “I have asked the Cuncolim Municipal Chairperson Devendra Desai to call a Council meeting immediately and drop the project mooted on the land in question”, Alemao said, adding that the lawyers of Vishnu and the Cuncolim civic body would sit and discuss the modalities on the withdrawal of the land acquisition proceedings.
Alemao pointed out that he has not acquired any fields nor has he allowed mega housing projects in the entire constituency since his election as MLA in 2002. “I am not responsible for the acquisition of the paddy fields. The proposal for the acquisition was moved by then BJP-ruled Cuncolim Municipal Council”, he said.
Sources in the know said the minister was not averse to the scrapping of the land acquisition proceedings on condition that the farmers offer a portion of the land in question for the development of a traffic junction outside the bus stand.
Incidentally, the farmer Vishnu had knocked the doors of the Judiciary, right from the Bombay High Court to the Supreme court, before restoring to the hunger strike.