TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: The Dabolim land denotification scam refuses to die down with the NGO, Human Rights Defenders, on Friday filing a complaint against former ministers, former deputy speaker and member secretary of Mormugao PDA with the Anti Corruption Branch of the Goa Police alleging “conspiracy and common intention to cheat the people of Goa.”
The complaint has been filed against the then Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, then Revenue Minister Jose Philip D’Souza, current Dabolim MLA and then deputy speaker Mauvin Godinho and Member Secretary of the Mormugao PDA P K Pandita.
“The entire malafide action has been done with studied criminal intent to perpetrate illegality and protect private interests by providing wrongful benefits to the private owner at the cost of public interest, which has caused irreparable loss and injury to the public cause and so the matter requires to be investigated into,” the complaint states.
How the four above named “held a meeting on February 14, 2011 in the presence of the (earlier) owner of the property along with some Airport officials and decided to denotify the acquisition on extraneous and specious considerations” despite the Airports Authority of India clearly opposing the withdrawal from the acquisition at the meeting.
“This entire exercise of showing availability of land as an alternate to the denotified land is that the land does not belong to the Government of Goa, but to the Ministry of Defence in the first case and secondly the Comunidade of Chicalim,” the complaint reads.
They have alleged that the four should be prosecuted for committing offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, and the Indian Penal Code.
The complaint touched upon how the government took a cabinet decision “in a tearing hurry and without following due procedure” to facilitate a denotification on ‘sympathetic grounds to obtain for the private owner, valuable benefits and pecuniary advantage, who has now sold the land for crores of rupees as opposed to the compensation the owner would received under the Land Acquisition Act.”
Superintendent of Police Bosco George told the delegation of the HRD that he would study their complaint and act accordingly.
The four persons concerned, including Bernard Costa, the beneficiary of the denotification, has consistently denied any wrongdoing in the past since the ‘scam’ broke out two years ago.
