PANAJI/VALPOI
Facing persistent opposition and agitation from locals displaced by the IIT campus project in Sattari, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Thursday got to ground zero at Shel-Melauli and met with villagers there.
Sattari is Sawant's home turf and he assured the agitating villagers that their grievances will be looked into and that they would face no injustice and on the contrary, would have a lot of facilities.
However, the locals were not convinced with the assurances of the chief minister and reiterated their opposition to the project.
He appealed to the villagers to form a committee to discuss all issues with the government and resolve them.
"The government is committed to ensure that no injustice is done to the people and will not set up any project with the intention of harassing farmers. On the contrary, the aim is to benefit farmers with overall development in the area," said Sawant, while addressing a number of locals at the Jalmi Devasthan premises in a bid to dispel the doubts of locals regarding the IIT project.
Appealing to the people to support the project without believing in misconceptions, Sawant said the government would give priority to locals in jobs, which would be directly or indirectly created through this project.
However, locals were not convinced and reiterated their opposition to the IIT project.
Many of them chanted anti-IIT slogans in front of the chief minister, who politely told them that he had not come to have a confrontation with the locals but to listen to their grievances.
Former ZP member Premnath Hazare, however, thanked the chief minister for visiting Guleli and listening to the grievances of the people.
Rama Melekar requested the government to ensure there is no injustice to locals over their ancestral land.
Earlier, the chief minister visited the project site and inspected the area along with other officials.
North Goa District Collector R Menka, former Nagargao ZP member Premnath Hazare, local panchayat member Arjun Melekar, Ram Melekar, Shubham Shivalkar and others were among those present at the meeting.
A strong police force was present during the chief minister’s visit to Guleli to prevent any untoward incident.
Sawant's government has allocated nearly 10-lakh square meters (1000 hectares) of land for the prestigious tech institute to locate their Goa campus at.
The protesting villagers, many of who 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.
