the goan I network
MARGAO
In a relief to Netravali Sarpanch Rajani Gaonkar and her deputy Abhijit Desai, the Fast Track Court at South Goa has stayed the order of the Director of Panchayat terminating their membership from the village Panchayat, pending hearing of the petition.
The court, however, has not granted a stay on the order of the Panchayat Director removing Rajani Gaonkar and Abhijit Desai from the post of sarpanch and deputy sarpanch respectively and the court has fixed hearing of final arguments on the plea on March 19.
The sarpanch and deputy sarpanch had knocked the doors of the South Goa district Court against the order of the Director of Panchayat which had ordered their removal and disqualification following a petition by Rakhi Naik, spokesperson of the Shiv Sena. Both the Sarpanch and deputy Sarpanch had gone to the public claiming that they were being victimized by the Panchayat Director just because they had refused certain permissions to Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s son Abhijat’s tourism project in the village.
In their petition filed before the South district Court challenging the order of the
Panchayat Director, the petitioners stated that sometime in the month of June, 2018, the deputy Sarpanch was asked for assistance by officials of the Health Department to locate a labourer who was suffering from malaria and was in the property of Abhijat Parrikar, son of Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar. When the said staff visited the site, they were obstructed and questioned for their visit pursuant to which all the problems commenced particularly for the deputy Sarpanch.
The petition further stated that Rakhi Naik, given her clout approached the Chief Minister of Goa with copy of a complaint addressed to Police Inspector, Crime Branch and the Chief Minister by his remark dated July 17, 2018 marked the complaint “to SP (Cyber Crime) for appropriate action”, pursuant to which an FIR was registered against the deputy Sarpanch, which is under challenge before the High Court.
In their petition, the Sarpanch and deputy Sarpanch termed the order of the Panchayat Director as illegal and perverse, adding that the notice was not addressed to them by their names but only by their designations. A Sarpanch and Deputy Sarpanch cannot be removed by their designations from the office, the duo contended.
They further submitted that the complaint itself shows that besides the Sarpanch and Deputy Sarpanch, there were others, who the respondent Rakhi claimed, were involved. No notice was issued to others but only petitioners were singled out for hostile discrimination, they said, adding that the Panchayat body is a collective body and no malafides can be attributed to a Panchayat body
“Even if resolutions are taken by majority, the opposition cannot seek to allege malafides unless personal malafide are approved. In this case, all decisions were unanimous by all the Panchayat members and questions of malafide have not been spelt out nor made out”, the petition said.
Senior lawyer, Adv Carlos Alvares, who represented the duo in the district Court contended that mere fact that the Director has power to remove a person from the membership of Panchayat for a period not exceeding five years cannot mean by any stretch of imagination that the Director can impose a five-year ban. The discretion has to be exercised judiciously and the ban could be for 6 months or for 1 year or even if 5 years being imposed, there has to be a reason why a lenient view or a harsh view is being taken, he added.
