MARGAO
Condemning Chief Minister Pramod Sawant for the meeting with GMR officials and giving assurances that he will personally review the progress of the process to reissue the environment clearance for the Mopa airport, Congress South Goa candidate Francisco Sardinha has urged the CM to stop working for GMR and complete pending projects
at Dabolim.
“The Chief Minister must not forget that his government was a respondent in the case before the Supreme Court. It tried to mislead the EAC committee and the courts about the number of trees and details of the wildlife on the plateau,” said Sardinha, adding, “It is the BJP government that conducted the environment impact assessment study.”
Sardinha said the Chief Minister has to first apologise to the people of Goa, to the poor locals whose houses were illegally demolished and were left homeless, the farmers who lost their livelihood, the NGT and the Supreme court, on behalf of his predecessors for manipulating the study and giving false information in the EIA report. “Being the party that is guilty of this fraud, Sawant has no moral right to give any assurance,” he added.
Referring to the pending works at Dabolim airport Sardinha condemned the BJP government of giving step-motherly treatment to it. “I had fought for it in my last term. The central government had sanctioned Rs 500 crore to upgrade the airport. Dabolim airport is the gateway to Goa. But what do our guests see when they first step out of the plane. Gambling advertisements, broken toilets and interiors, non-functional multi-storeyed parking, incomplete grade separators and dusty parking areas for taxis are some of the things that greet them. The deadline for completing grade separators was 2015. Why is it taking six years to complete the grade separators?” he questioned.
He blamed the woes inside the new terminal on the BJP government for inaugurating it in haste even before the interiors were complete during Lusofonia games.
He demanded that the BJP government focus on the government-owned Dabolim airport which will have a capacity of 1.2 crore passenger per year by 2021, which according to the government’s own record is sufficient till 2035.
“When the Congress had envisaged Mopa airport 20 years ago, we thought it would contribute to the government’s coffers and the tourism industry. We never wanted to give 90 lakh square meters virtually free of cost to a private company. We never wanted to give 15 lakh square metres for a casino hub. The government says they will earn 36 per cent but they don’t know the actual revenue estimates that they will earn.”
