PANAJI
With Chief Minister Pramod Sawant maintaining complete silence over scrapping the proposed IIT Goa campus project in Codar, villagers are now demanding a written assurance from the government.
On Sunday, Minister and Shiroda MLA Subhash Shirodkar announced that the government had decided not to go ahead with the IIT project at Codar owing to public opposition. However, Sawant, who had initially expressed anguish over villagers' protest, has not made any statement as of now.
The villagers, on Wednesday late evening, resolved to seek a written assurance from the chief minister that the IIT project would not be implemented in Codar. They also appealed to the Sarpanch to convene a special gram sabha.
“The CM must clearly announce that the IIT project has been scrapped by the government. Only then will our doubts be cleared. Unless a categorical written assurance is given, we will continue our opposition and intensify the agitation against the project,” they said.
The Central Comunidade on August 19, issued a notice about the government plans to acquire about 14.5 lakh sq. mts of comunidade land for the project and had granted 30-days to the people to raise their objections. The villagers, primarily from the tribal community, led major protest against the project, arguing that their village is agriculturally rich and that many locals depend on farming for their livelihood.
When contacted, WRD Minister Shirodkar informed that the government had not initiated any process as such but the comunidade had only issued a letter for a resolution to hand over the land to the government. “We had proposed to take over only 12 lakh sq mtrs of comunidade land, which is a rocky land and there are hardly 12 trees there. Around 7 lakh sq mts of peripheral land having cashew plantation was left out,” he explained.
Without going into the details as to what forced the government to change its decision overnight, Shirodkar said “people are opposing it as we cannot impose on them something that they don’t want…and for me the IIT project issue is over”.
He also said that villagers were misguided and many leaders from opposition instigated them against the project.
