Team Herald
PANJIM: The Save Old Goa Action Committee (SOGAC) and concerned citizens of Goa submitted a memorandum to the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) at the Secretariat on Wednesday.
The submission of the memorandum follows the recent statement made by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant that he was unaware of the issue which has led to protests in Old Goa over the last couple of months.
They claim their repeated requests for a meeting with the CM has been denied over the last month and on Wednesday too, despite Sawant being in the same building, he did not entertain them. SOGAC member Hugo Gonsalves said the CMO had asked them to send emails, which were ignored. Gonsalves criticised the government’s handling of this sensitive matter and questioned why the CM was silent on this issue.
Nonetheless, SOGAC said the whole memorandum was submitted in interest of educating the CM who had feigned ignorance about the under-construction project near a protected monument at Old Goa – the Largo of St Cajetan, Viceroy’s Arch and St Cajetan Church.
After the SOGAC delegation submitted the memorandum, the large group of protestors outside the Secretariat addressed media persons where they expressed their shock to find that information they had sought from the Town and Country Planning (TCP) Department is missing. What was ironic was that part of the information they had sought under RTI had been provided by TCP to them earlier this year but these crucial documents are missing now.
“In March 2021, we filed an RTI to the TCP asking for relevant permissions, and were provided an extract of the same. It was noted in minutes of the State Conservation Committee dated April 28, 2016 that the site was located between 100 and 300 mts away from the protected area. This is grossly incorrect,” said SOGAC member Freddy Dias.
Following speculation that this had been clarified in another meeting by the committee later on, SOGAC filed another RTI asking for the complete minutes of both the meetings.
“The TCP informed us the file cannot be traced. We are pursuing this in an appeal but this is blatant destruction of evidence,” Dias added.
Old Goa resident Glen Cabral alleged a fraud in how permissions were granted for the controversial project that’s being constructed in a protected area of Old Goa.
Cabral accused the authorities of trying to cover up the matter.
It may be recalled that SOGAC has already filed a petition in the Supreme Court about this issue and the apex court had issued notices to the various respondents and had scheduled the next hearing on October 8.
Earlier in their memorandum, SOGAC repeated the demands that they have been making during their protests. In this case, they have asked the CM to immediately order the demolition of the alleged illegal structure which they say is in total violation of all the laws. “Order an investigation into the fraud committed by the various State Departments mentioned herein above,” was another demand in their memorandum.
Finally, SOGAC asked the CM to instruct the TCP to mark the lines demarcating what’s known as the ‘protected area’, the ‘100 metres prohibited area’ and the ‘200 metres regulated area’, on the Regional Plan, which is mandatory as per “The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 2010 (AMASR Act)”. They have asked for the corrected plans to be notified immediately.
