the goan I network
PANAJI
Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, who also holds the industries portfolio, on Saturday announced that the Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) will soon auction around 5 lakh square meters of the land it got back from the SEZ promoters to raise money and pay back the over Rs 150 crore loan it took to pay back for the land.
Rane, who addressed a press conference in Panaji said, the “meter is ticking” for repayment of the principle and interest to the commercial bank from which GIDC had raised the nearly Rs 150 crore loan to finance a dubious deal the State-owned corporation struck with SEZ promoters to take back the land. Rane’s announcement evoked an immediate and sharp response from Leader of the Opposition Digambar Kamat who said the proposal is illegal.
Kamat in a post on his Twitter handle said: “Govt should not auction land to make illegal #SEZ payments. I urge immediate intervention of @goacm to stop this misdeed...”.
Kamat further went on to say that the people of Goa will not accept the auction of land to fund the dubious payments to the SEZ promoters.
“Hope @DrPramodSawant @visrane take note,” Digambar tweeted with a hashtag SaveLandforGoemkars.
In a controversial move implemented over a six-month process, the State government through the GIDC has paid a whopping Rs 200 crore plus to seven SEZ promoter companies earlier this month to take back some 38-lakh square meters of land from them.
The issue dates back to 2006-07 when the government of Rane’s father and Poriem MLA, Pratapsing Rane had controversially allotted large tracts of prime industrial land
to the SEZ promoters.
Rane Senior, the then Industries Minister and current Navelim MLA Luizinho Faleiro were indicted for the illegal allocation of land by the Bombay High Court in a 2010 judgement in which it also directed the State to book an FIR against the two politicians as well as current Deputy Chief Minister Chandrakant Babu Kavlekar who was then the GIDC chairman, besides bureaucrats linked to the process.
Kamat who took over as chief minister post the 2007 assembly elections taking the cue from widespread agitations against the promotion of SEZs by the State scrapped the proposals for setting them up.
Meanwhile, Rane Jr said all records of the GIDC are slated to be digitalised and timeframe will be set for every hue of transaction of the Corporation.
He also said that all land owned by GIDC will be geo-tagged.
Rane also said that around six-lakh square meters of land required by the Centre to promote clusters such as ‘maritime cluster’ and food-processing cluster will be provided so that industries come up and GIDC returns to its job-creation objective.
“If land is provided, then 80 per cent of the funding to set up these clusters will come from the Centre,” Rane said, adding that the 34-odd lakh square meters of land unlocked by the deal struck with the SEZ promoters should be put to good use. Consultants for Pvt medical college
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PANAJI: Alarmed by the rising numbers deaths, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane on Saturday called for people’s involvement in the fight against dengue in Goa. “Dengue is a concern. The total number of cases may have fallen in comparison to last year but deaths are more. It is a concern and I think its time people play their part,” Rane said. >> See pg 5
