VASCO: In a bizarre incident, miscreants damaged the abandoned Kala Bhavan project at Sancoale, causing a loss of crores of rupees to the State exchequer. The incident has annoyed as well as disappointed the Sancoale panchayat, which has demanded that the government take immediate steps to complete the project or else miscreants would continue to damage the building and use it for anti-social activities.
“It is a really serious issue. The State government has spent over Rs 21 crore on the Kala Bhavan project, but after completing 70 percent of the work, which includes 90 percent of the structural work, the government abandoned the project, and making it a safe place for miscreants and anti-social elements to use the building for all sorts of activities,” said Sancoale Sarpanch Ramakant Borkar.
He further said, “What disappoints us more is that the Sancoale panchayat had given 21,000 square metres of panchayat land for the project under goodwill. We are repenting our decision as the project had been left incomplete, and today, we don’t have enough land to construct our own panchayat building.”
He continued, “On several occasions, the issue of the abandoned Kala Bhavan project and miscreants misusing the premises was raised by the villagers at the gram sabha. Even the villagers have been demanding that police conduct frequent patrolling near the abandoned project, which has become a den of anti-social elements. But even this demand was neglected. The gram sabha and panchayat had also agreed that if the government cannot complete the work within six months, then the panchayat will place a demand to take back its land or for the government to handover the building in the present condition so that the panchayat can give it on lease to a private party and generate revenue.”
Borkar added, “Sadly, after inspecting the site last year, Cortalim MLA and RDA Minister Alina Saldanha and Art and Culture Minister Dayanand Mandrekar had assured the work on the project would resume by December 2015. However, this assurance was never fulfilled. The panchayat has now decided to take a delegation of villagers and panchas to meet Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar and request him to handover the project to the panchayat soon.”
