Team Herald
MARGAO: Margao Municipal Council’s decision to acquire 15,165 square meters of land at Kharelem in Sirvodem has stirred a hornet’s nest with former chairperson Savio Coutinho alleging that the decision was taken to cover up the illegal acts of a councilor.
However, MMC Chairperson Babita Prabhudesai said that the council has only proposed to acquire the land to prevent any illegal development on the orchard land as was complained earlier and pointed out that already there are quite a bit of encroachments and illegal developments undertaken in the area.
On the other hand Chief Officer Johnson Fernandes was skeptical whether the council would be able to acquire the land as the land available is an issue and added that the council can take any resolution but its feasibility has to be studied and only then it will be implemented.
It may be recalled that in May last year Savio Coutinho had exposed the attempts to illegally develop the said land by carving out 28 plots most of which were admeasuring less than 100 square metres with a few admeasuring a little over 100 square metres.
He had pointed out that the sub division of such plots is not mandated by law and further pointed out that the plan showing the sub-divided plots was prepared by Hightec Engineers for their client Bhagewadi Khutbuddin who is a member of the Margao Municipal Council.
Bhagewadi has then claimed that he was falsely implicated and his name was forged in the plan and though he had threatened to file a complaint with the police for forgery and falsely implicating him, nothing of such was done.
Admitting that there were complaints about the illegal development of the land, Dr Babita said the MMC was proposing to acquire it to avoid any illegal development in future so that the council can use the land for multi utility.
Chief Officer Johnson Fernandes who has personally inspected the site, had a different perspective to the issue. “The actual land available is the issue and according to me only around six to seven thousand square metres of land is available of the so called 15,165 sq mts,” he said.
He pointed out that land coming under the purview of CRZ will have to be kept out as no development can take place there, besides the sewerage line is passing through the land hence area occupied by the line along with setbacks will have to be delineated. Dismissing Savio’s charge that the land is sought to be acquired to compensate the councilor, he said only a portion of the land if available may be acquired as the council after studying the available land my well decide not to acquire it.
“I shall also be writing to the Town and Country Planning Department asking whether we can use that land for multi-utility project and the reply from the department will also decide what role the MMC shall play,” he said.
