PANAJI
Following the allegation over the integrity of the team of officers on the Mhadei cell, Water Resources Minister Felipe Neri Rodrigues on Tuesday said that the government will reconstitute the Mhadei cell with an undoubted team of officers.
"Chief Minister is minutely examining the matter and government will take a conscious decision and not a hasty one with regards to constituting the Mhadei cell," said Rodrigues.
As many as seven out of nine engineers deployed in the WRD's Mhadei cell are from Karnataka. Interestingly, the newly promoted WRD chief engineer Pramod Badami also hails from Karnataka. The activists have already warned the government of the possible repercussions of appointing seven Karnataka native engineers to handle the Mhadei issue.
The dispute about Mhadei water has reached a crucial situation in the Supreme Court.
The assistant chief engineer R R Yergatti is also from Karnataka, surveyor G S Basutkar, assistant surveyor Nayana Kulkarni, executive engineer Anant Kandolkar, Executive Engineer Satish Pauskar, Surveyer Krishnakant Patil all are from Karnataka. Only officials Bipin Karapurkar and Dilip Naik who are in the Mahadei cell are from Goa.
Dilip Naik, however, has written to the Chief Engineer about his unwillingness to work in the team of the Mhadei cell.
The Goan officers in the department have alleged that Chief Engineer Badami is giving an upper hand to the non-Goan engineers while giving promotion, and due to this many Goan engineers are angry with him.
Activist Rajendra Kerkar has demanded that as Mhadei is a sensitive issue and Karnataka has played many tricks with Goa, the government should appoint good officers in the Mhadei cell.
Kerkar recalled that when Atmaram Nadkarni was representing Goa in the Mhadei dispute, at that time allegations of leaking important information to Karnataka were made on one officer of Karnataka origin.
