PANJIM: The extent of corruption in the Panchayat Department of the Goa Government can be gauged from the fact that a small wada or Mohalla located close to the shoreline, with just about 800 inhabitants, has 187 illegal structures.
There are other wadas along the shore at Arambol, Madhlawada and Khalchawada; now run your imagination wild and do the Math.
While in other wards not so many illegal structures would belong to ex or present Panch of Panchayat; but their complicity in enabling such structures to come up cannot be dismissed or overlooked, after all, they are statutory guardians of their respective wards.
No one knows for a fact how many illegal structures are there in just VP Arambol, because investigation and trial are restricted to just one wada.
At Khalchawada, the most congested part of the shoreline at Arambol, permanent structures like Restaurants and Guest House are built barely 30 metres from the high tide line. From Khalchawada towards the infamous "Sweet Water Lake" beach lane, absolute mockery of rules and regulations has been made, by locals, hand in glove with the Panch and Sarpanch. Guest Houses and Shops are built right at the edge of the sea, with sewage water being discharged into the sea, with pipelines visible fairly.
Hills have been cut and guest houses have been built, further along there are strings of huts and shops.
If you are curious enough, you don't have to even visit Arambol, there are just too many videos online and one can just shake her head in disbelief at the extent of greed and apathy of residents and their supposed to be supervisors, who are the drop of a wad of cash, become facilitators for illegal pursuit of others.
How can a Paradise can be raped and almost murdered, one just had to spend a few hours online, searching through articles and videos, along with images. Arambol is the epitome of greed among locals of Goa and apathy of the very institutions, who are serving to protect Goa or Arambol, against the same evils.
All these Panchas and Sarpanchas have their favourable and favourite political masters, who are facilitators of innumerable illegal acts.
Ironically, the Panchayat Raj Act makes it compulsory for all the Panch and Sarpanch of every Village Panchayat to declare their movable and immovable assets via affidavit. An advertisement recently had names of all the Panch of Goa who had not declared their assets for the FY 2021-2022. Almost none of them did including Bernard Fernandes.
It took litigation and the direction of the Honourable High Court of Goa, for all to figure out the immovable assets and properties of Bernard Fernandes. Not the value, but at least the number.