the goan I network
PANAJI
Locals of Chimbel led by Ana Gracias, and volunteers of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led by AAP leaders Pradeep Padgaonkar and Sidharth Karapurkar protested at the Chimbel lake on Friday. They claimed that Alvara land was going to be converted for the proposed Chimbel IT park.
Showing documents that demarcated the Alvara land, and the proposed IT park which overlapped with the alvara land, locals and AAP volunteers expressed that they were against the ‘unwanted IT park.’
Karapurkar alleged that besides the IT park spread across over five lakh square meters of land, Khaunte was eyeing an additional five lakh square meters of Alvara land in the vicinity.
“The entire amendment to the Land Revenue Code (LRC) by inserting Section 37A and 37B was a huge scam to declare anyone holding definitive titles to land to ultimately sell it off to huge corporate lobbies who are desperate to seek more land,” said Karapurkar. He informed that AAP were likely to challenge the amendments to the LRC that are facilitating the sale of Alvara Lands to builders.
AAP in a statement, accused IT and Revenue minister Rohan Khaunte of being on a land grabbing spree in the name of an ‘unwanted IT park’, while local activist Ana Gracias said that Rohan Khaunte was out to destroy the Chimbel lake, after allegedly facilitating concretisation of the kadamba plateau with a showroom for Mercedes Benz, Hotel Hilton and V2 supermarket. These areas allegedly belong to Khaunte through his family members.
“Chimbel has a lot of ST population, and their rights are being trampled upon without any concern for their livelihoods,” said Gracias.
Further stating that the beautiful lake was built by the Portuguese in the early 1900s, and its water supplied to the whole of Panaji while at the same time meeting the needs of the local villagers for agriculture, Gracias said that the IT park will destroy the ground water level, many wild species flourishing in this area such as peacocks, butterflies, wild boars, migratory birds and wild animals that abound in there.
Gracias also accused Khaunte of fooling the people on promises of jobs. “Why have the IT parks at Dona Paula and Soccoro not been taken up after crores of rupees were spent, trees were cut down, displacing animals and birds from their natural habitat?” demanded Gracias.
