PANAJI
Facing persistent opposition and agitation from locals displaced by the IIT campus project in Sattari, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant got to ground zero at Shel-Melaulim and met with villagers.
Sattari is Sawant's home turf and he assured the agitating villagers that their grievances will be looked into and resolved.
Sawant's government has allocated nearly 10-lakh square metres (1,000 hectare) of land for the prestigious tech institute to locate their Goa campus.
The protesting villagers, many of whom cultivated patches of land there for decades, don't have titles for their rights owing to the complex land ownership quagmire of Sattari.
Some lands are covered under the 'Mokashe' and others described as 'Alvara' but processes for conferring rights to cultivators under the 'land to tiller' reforms of 1960s and 1970s have made little progress here in Sattari.
The nature of Sawant's promises to the villagers on Thursday are not clearly known but in the past he has publicly stated that all sorts of compensation, including providing alternate land to genuine claimants will be explored.
