MARGAO
He did not leave a single stone unturned to corner the BJP-led government during his stint as an Opposition MLA in the last five years, blaming the Manohar Parrikar government and later the Parsekar dispensation as Margao Municipal Council’s grandiose plan to acquire the city’s crumbling structures of heritage value “ the old Camara building and the ancestral house of the great Goan nationalist Dr Francisco Luis Gomes “ could not take off since the last eight years?
Well, if Margao Municipal engineers are to be believed, plans to acquire the land in question to protect the two heritage sites could not take off for want of NOCs from the Town and Country Planning department. In fact, MMC’s technical section has claimed that applications for NOCs, a pre-requisite for land acquisition, have been stuck in the office of the Town and Country department over the years.
Questions are now doing the rounds in city circles whether there can be any turn around now with Vijai Sardesai presiding over the affairs of the Town and Country Planning department and whether the TCP Minister will now take his long-standing demand for conservation of the two heritage structures to its logical conclusion. In fact, the Fatorda MLA had time and again stressed on the need to conserve the old Camara building at Old market, crumbling for want of conservation by the government authorities.
Heritage and conservation lovers led by historian Dr Prajal Sakhardande had repeatedly underlined the need to protect the crumbling old Camara structure given its value from the heritage and historical point of view, but in vain.
When The Goan contacted the TCP Minister to find out whether he has any plan up his sleeve to restore the two places of historical importance, Sardesai said he is committed to the conservation of the old Camara building, but will need time to study how to go about in protecting the ancestral house of Dr Francis Luis Gomes. “As far as the Camara de Salcete building is concerned, I am committed to its protection. I will soon have a meeting with the landlady and the tenants how to go about on the conservation plan,” Sardesai told The Goan.
As far as the ancestral house of Dr Francis Luis Gomes located at Colmorod-Navelim is concerned, the TCP Minister was apparently trying to tread a cautious path. “Since the ownership of the ancestral house is an issue, I will require time to study the matter in detail,” he added.
Incidentally, Sardesai had been a strong votary of the restoration of the ancestral house of Dr Gomes as a museum as pleas by the historians and academicians to restore and conserve the ancestral house for posterity had not found strong favour with successive governments.
Incidentally, the Margao Municipal Council had on November 5, 2009, adopted a resolution numbered 3,772 to conserve the ancestral house of historical importance of the great Goan nationalist. It will be eight years in November this year since the MMC adopted the resolution and the historians and politicians like Sardesai had been strongly rooting for the restoration of the ancestral house of
Dr Gomes.
Though the Margao Municipality had claimed that it had mooted the twin proposal to the government to acquire the ancestral house admeasuring 1,143 sq mts and the old Camara building, the ground reality remains unchanged till date.
