Late last week, the North Goa Collector and Chairperson of the District Disaster Management Authority issued an order directing the General Administration Department to ensure that Junta House, along 18th June Road is vacated within 30 days as the building is no longer safe and fit to house government offices any more. The order is in effect, a death certificate for the building, which has been dying a slow and painful death over the years -- both on account of its deteriorating condition as well as because as government offices were moved out, the people and offices that gave it life also left.
Built in the mid-60s during the tenure of Goa’s first democratically elected government under the stewardship of Chief Minister Dayanand Bandodkar, it housed all of the government’s most important offices at a time when there was little else. The six-storeyed structure stood out on Panjim’s urban landscape on account of its height and density.
In truth, the writing was on the wall for a while now. Its flat roof terrace and open galleries meant it was not architecturally suited for Goa’s heavy monsoon. And while the design may have been a conscious choice to make a point that Goa was moving beyond its colonial past to a more modern era marked by urban facades, it also meant it couldn’t handle the rains well. Maintenance proved costly and was sporadic. The Chief Minister had announced plans to demolish it last year and since then, the Goa government has signed a MoU with NBCC India also known as the National Buildings Construction Corporation to demolish and reconstruct the building.
Over the years, government departments were moved out, not just from the building, but from Panjim city itself. Offices were shifted, some to Porvorim, and others elsewhere and now the government has also announced plans to construct a Prashashan Stambh at Chimbel thus ensuring even more offices move out of the capital city. This is not a good move for the city. The life of a city relies on its people -- the people who move in and out of it, conduct business, and meet and greet over work. Moving offices out means moving people out, people who now have less reason to visit the city and who instead will have to make multiple trips in different directions. While the government has promised that there will be a building to replace the Junta House, it could be a really long time before the plan materialises.
While one cannot really fault the government for ringing the death knell of the once-iconic structure, questions must certainly be asked as to how the situation was allowed to come to this. If the building were to have been written off, it should have been written off a long time ago with plans quickly drawn up for its replacement. It should never have been allowed to die a slow painful death of abuse and neglect.
Today we are left with a situation in which the property is going to remain as a standing reminder of the failure of the government to maintain and renew its own offices and estates that it owns tying them down with red tape indecisiveness and neglect thereby not only risking lives but also costing the exchequer potential revenue.
