the goan I network
PANAJI
The villagers opposing the notification of the Greater Panaji PDA have vowed to carry forward their protest planned for April 6 and will not be fettered by the government’s latest moves to denotify some villages from the PDA.
“We will go ahead with our agitation until we have a concrete assurance from the government and not verbal assurances before the press that the entire PDA is denotified. It is not about certain villages being removed from the entire plan,” Arturo D’Souza who has been leading the charge told media persons.
He said that their battle is not because their individual villages have been included in the PDA but that the entire PDA needed to be scrapped on account of it being fundamentally flawed.
On April 6, a large group of protesters will descend on the city at Patto and march into Azad Maidan where they plan to sit until the TCP Minister comes and assures them that he will denotify the entire Greater Panaji PDA.
This group of protesters will also include villagers from Siridao, Gancim, Azossim and surrounding villages even though their villages have been withdrawn from the PDA on grounds that their fight is to denotify the entire PDA and not just a few villages.
Meanwhile the subcommittee of the TCP Board which has been meeting the villagers whose villages have been included in the GPPDA could not reach a conclusion as the villagers along with their elected representatives of Curca, Bambolim and Telaulim village panchayat refused to budge in their demand that the parts of their village which have been included in the PDA area be denotified.
The sub-committee too refused to agree to a denotification as was being sought by the villagers and their panchas.
