MAPUSA
For an 80-year-old aam aadmi Goan battling frailty and ill health, governance is not about slogans or schemes “ it is about whether a simple, uncontested service can be delivered in his lifetime.
In the case of Joao Caetano Perpetuo Pinto, the answer has been a resounding no.
For the past 10 years, Pinto has been struggling to get a land mutation completed at the Mamlatdar’s court in Mapusa, exposing how administrative apathy and systemic failure continue to torment ordinary citizens.
The octogenarian has been forced to repeatedly climb the staircases of the Mamlatdar’s office to pursue the mutation of a small 72-square-metre plot he purchased at Pomburpa “ an ordeal that has worsened his physical condition with every visit.
The saga began in 2015 when Pinto filed a mutation application for survey nos 65/2 and 86/4, supported by a registered deed of release executed before the Bardez Sub-Registrar.
The case involved no dispute, no objections and no competing claims. All statutory procedures, including publication, were completed. Yet governance failed him at the very first stage.
In 2017, the then Joint Mamlatdar III of Bardez passed an inexplicable order “ partly allowing the mutation by inserting Pinto’s name but refusing to delete the predecessor in title from the occupants’ column of Form I and XIV.
When Pinto pointed out the absurdity of a mutation that was never fully carried out, he was curtly told to file an appeal, as the mamlatdar refused to review the order.
That single act of administrative stubbornness plunged the senior citizen into six years of litigation before the Deputy Collector.
Only in 2023 did the appellate authority intervene, remanding the matter back with explicit directions to complete the mutation in accordance with the law.
Even then, the system failed to deliver.
In June 2024, the Joint Mamlatdar III ordered deletion of the predecessor’s name “ but the order was never implemented due to the mamlatdar’s sudden transfer.
The file once again fell into limbo, a victim of a governance structure where continuity, accountability and ownership of decisions are glaringly absent.
In March 2025, Pinto submitted a written plea to the new mamlatdar, seeking sympathetic and time-bound relief.
“I hoped that someone would see my age and understand my suffering. But my pleas have gone unheard,” he told this newspaper.
The case starkly contradicts the government’s claims of citizen-centric governance under initiatives such as Sarkar Tumchya Dari and Prashasan Tumchya Dari, which promise swift and accessible public services.
