PANJIM: In a major statement on the laxity of record-keeping in the Goa Legislative Assembly, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Monday admitted that Assembly records in the old Assembly building at Adil Shah Palace were lost.
Precious Goa Assembly records from the Adil Shah Palace which served as the old Assembly building have been discarded while shifting to the new Goa Assembly Complex, Porvorim, Sawant said while speaking at the inauguration of a two-day training programme for MLAs at Panjim.
This inexplicable negligence on the part of officers is an unfathomable loss to Goa’s political and legislative history. It is a major blow to research scholars, who would have documented legislative functioning in Goa.
Precious records pertaining to first Chief Minister Dayanand Bandodkar, Leader of the Opposition Jack de Sequeira, and other stalwarts such as former Minister late Kashinath Jalmi were discarded while shifting (from the Old Secretariat building to new premises at Porvorim). Don’t know under whose instructions, Sawant said.
The New Assembly complex at Porvorim was inaugurated on March 5, 2000 when Francisco Sardinha was the Chief Minister.
“The Goa Assembly has a long history since 1963. When I became the Speaker in 2017, I tried to digitise all the records since 1963. But very sorry to say that many records like speeches of Goa’s first Chief Minister Bahusaheb Bandodkar or Leader of the Opposition Jack de Sequeira were found destroyed or missing. This happened while the Assembly’s functioning was
shifted. I don’t’ know who instructed me to do so,” he said.
Ironically these remarks came almost eight years after Goa Assembly went completely paperless in its proceedings.
Dr Pramod Sawant said that the Goa Legislative Assembly became the first in the State to go completely paperless in 2014, when Rajendra Arlekar was the Speaker. Arlekar, who is now the Governor of Himachal Pradesh was also present.
The chief minister said he has asked the All India Radio (AIR) to give voice recordings of first chief minister so that it can be preserved for the younger generation. He felt that efforts should be put in to make the Goa Assembly records available since 1963, digitised.
Sawant said his regret was he could not do digitisation of Assembly records when he was Speaker and requested Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar to initiate steps to digitise records and proceedings of the Assembly at least from now onwards and to preserve it for future use.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have old records available with us today, hence I request the Speaker to digitise the available records so that our future MLAs have something to learn,” Sawant said.
