TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
MARGAO: Minister for Tribal Welfare and UTAA leader Ramesh Tawadkar on Monday asserted that the ongoing agitation in support of the withdrawal of the Amendment to the Tenancy Act will not damage the BJP’s image in the state.
In fact, Tawadkar asserted that the BJP government is firm in its decision on the Amendment, asserting that there would be no roll back on the Amendment transferring tenancy cases from the Mamlatdar courts to the Civil courts.
“The government is open for minor Amendments, but the decision to hand over the Tenancy cases from the Mamlatdars to the Civic Courts will remain unchanged”, Tawadkar said while speaking during an informal interaction with the media after a briefing on the state sports festival at the Ravindra bhavan here this evening.
Tawadkar’s comments assumed significance and comes against the backdrop of the resolution adopted by the UTAA convention on Sunday at Ponda demanding withdrawal of the Amendment to the Tenancy Act.
‘The BJP will not be affected at all by the propaganda unleashed by UTAA and other political parties on the Amendment to the Tenancy Act”, he said, while asking whether the ongoing agitation will affect the party’s prospects in the state.
On the UTAA allegation that 10 out of the 12 charter of demands of the tribal population remains unfulfilled till date, Tawadkar said though the government has set in motion the process to implement the remaining demands, various problems have cropped up during the implementation. For instance, while admitting that the tribal sub plan has not been fully utilised till date, Tawadkar said many a scheme could not be 100 per cent implemented for want of applications from the beneficiaries. “Unless there’s an awareness created amongst the people, the bottlenecks will remain”, he said.
Similarly, the minister said that backlog of vacancies for the STs has hit a block again for the reason that the previous governments had filled up the vacancies and candidates from the ST community will now have to wait till the present employees retire.
