ASHLEY DO ROSARIO
PANAJI
A 2001 State legislation specially crafted to deal with disasters and contingencies of the kind posed by the grounding of the dangerous naphtha-laden tanker off Dona Paula has remained buried in political and bureaucratic mire even as the Pramod Sawant administration and other Central agencies are seemingly inhibited by financial, legal and technical hurdles to commence salvage operations.
The law -- The Goa Tourist Places (Protection amd Maintenance) Act, 2001 -- gives the State government sweeping powers to take over ownership of the grounded vessel and dispose it in the “manner it deems fit”.
The law also empowers the State government to sell the vessel in a ‘public auction’ and use the proceeds to offset the costs of salvaging or removing it.
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant replied in the negative on Tuesday when asked whether the State will bear the immediate cost of the salvage operations.
“The State is not spending any money on the operation. Owner of the ship is responsible. If he fails, MPT will be asked to bear it, if not DG Shipping will take care,” Sawant said, indicating that the State government is yet to take recourse to the law which legally served it well at the time of dealing with the situation in Sinquerim related to the grounding of the late Anil Salgaocar-chartered River Princess.
The law was the brainchild of former chief minister, the late Manohar Parrikar, who enacted it in November 2001, after Salgaocar’s non-cooperative stance posed hurdles in the State’s effort to remove the vessel from where it was grounded and posing a grave environmental threat to the tourism hub of Sinquerim-Candolim-Calangute.
The legislation had also then passed the judicial test after Salgaocar had challenged it before the High Court and the current Sawant administration’s hesitancy to invoke the law has puzzled many.
Oddly, the State government is yet to designate any of its departments as the nodal entity to deal with procedures to get the salvage operation in the case of the grounded naphtha tanker executed.
Currently Revenue Secretary Sanjay Kumar, IAS, is the government’s trouble-shooter and is co-ordinating all matters related to the disaster and the purported salvage.
Under the 2001 law, however, the Director of Tourism has been designated as the “competent authority” to exercise the powers and implement its provisions on behalf of the Government of Goa.
Meanwhile, the Harbour Police who had on October 26 booked an FIR following a complaint filed by the Deputy Surveyor of MPT, Captain Manoj Joshi, and seized passports of the ship’s charterer Pawan Arya and its skipper Captain Sharma, have asked the duo not to leave the State until the salvage operations of the ship are complete.
