PANJIM: Goa State Industries Association (GSIA) has stated that the current disproportionate assets case against Leader of the Opposition Chandrakant (Babu) Kavlekar vindicates its stand but the association is clueless about the proceedings on its own criminal complaint filed against the MLA.
GSIA President Rajkumar Kamat, addressing the media, demanded that the government convert their 2011 criminal complaint into an FIR against Kavlekar who was then Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) chairman.
“GSIA filed a criminal complaint against Babu Kavlekar and other GIDC officials. However, under political pressure the police did not register the FIR. GSIA kept up the pressure on successive governments but no action was taken,” Kamat stated.
GSIA further alleged that the irregularities continued even during the last term of the BJP-led government. Kamat said, “Even during the last government towards the last part of the tenure there have been irregularities.”
When asked about the association’s criminal complaint, he said that GIDC had resolved to file a fresh complaint and that too had not happened. “We don’t know the current status of that complaint but we would now push that a fresh FIR be filed against Kavlekar into the criminal complaint that we had filed,” Kamat added.
He said, “It is clear that the alleged disproportionate assets must have been acquired through corrupt practices during six years of his tenure as the chairman of GIDC wherein he and his officials ran a virtual riot on honest entrepreneurs and handed over precious land to speculators who traded it for windfall gains.”
Demanding that the investigation into the SEZ land scam be fast tracked, he said, “While GSIA wants this land to be returned to GIDC, it also demands that Kavlekar’s role in the wrongful allotment should be investigated for criminality.”
