Ashley do Rosario
Interestingly scathing strictures from the High Court on the controversial seven SEZs, which short of calling it a scam, described it as everything else, did not deter the political executive from bending backward to give the seven promoter companies not just a honourable exit, but a profitable one too.
Special Economic Zone (SEZ) was a concept of a business district touted as the next big ‘engine of growth’ back in 2005, when its architect and the man credited for India’s 1990s leap into global economic orbit -- Manmohan Singh -- was leading the country as Prime Minister in the first of his two terms.
The idea may have not have taken off as well as he had planned it to, but Goa perhaps did not disappoint Singh on his stated ‘engine of economic growth’ goal. Only, it so turns out that the ‘economic growth’ wasn’t a gain for the State’s or the country’s economy, but rather, for a handful of private entrepreneurs -- the seven promoters of SEZs in Goa -- and perhaps a caucass of middlemen and politicians.
In the 13-odd years between 2005-06 when Goa formulated its own SEZ policy and the government controversially distributed a whopping 38.4 lakh square meters among seven SEZ promoter companies and now in 2019, when the land was taken back by the Goa IDC, not a pin got manufactured or traded.
Yet, the SEZ promoters earned a handsome, nearly 100 per cent profit on their idle investment, having got paid nearly double of what they had invested to pay for the land the State government allocated to them at
the start.
The tide began to change in favour of the SEZ promoters last year. First, a cabinet decision in July of 2018 by the government of the late, Manohar Parrikar, then struggling-for-life against the fatal pancreatic cancer he was diagnosed with, directed Goa IDC to withdraw all criminal proceedings which it had initiated on the directions given by the Bombay High Court in its 2010 judgement which had held the land allotment prima-facie dubious.
The Parrikar cabinet’s decision also simultaneously authorised the Goa IDC Board to hold ‘out of court’ negotiations with the promoters as suggested by the Supreme Court before which the 2010 High Court judgement was challenged. Eventually Goa IDC ended up striking a deal which has raised several questions on justification of the valuations and a million other legal and technical aspects.
Finally, last month the Pramod Sawant government sealed the deal by permitting Goa IDC to borrow a whopping Rs 200 crores from a commercial bank to pay up the SEZ promoters for the land it took back from them, ostensibly in the garb of “freeing the SEZ-locked land” to give impetus to new industry.
Thus over 13 years, this passing-the-parcel spectacle of the 340-odd acres between the State-owned IDC and the seven SEZ promoters has metamorphosed into a double-whammy of scams of sorts for Goa: first the land allotment which the High Court has prima-facie held to be ‘illegal’ and now the re-acquisition of the land with a premium paid to the promoters, dubbed ‘illegal’ by Opposition Leader Digambar Kamat on the floor of the Goa legislative assembly.
Meanwhile, those instrumental in dragging the matter to the courts in 2008, are livid at this turn of events in the end.
“When the High Court has declared the allotments illegal, it is unjustified for the government to return the amounts received with interest amounting to Rs 148 crores of public money,” claims Franky Monteiro, a Loutolim-based RTI activist who was one of the many petitioners who challenged the shady SEZ transactions before the Bombay High Court.
“It’s like crowning the thieves with monetary awards and glorifying them. It also means that the government is considering the allotments lawful, which contravenes the 2010 Bombay High Court judgement,” Monteiro said.
Monteiro also slammed the State government for deciding to withdraw criminal proceedings in the matter and termed it the State’s “abuse of powers”.
Monteiro and several other activists had dragged the State government, Goa IDC, SEZ promoter companies to court alleging irregularities and corruption in the land allotments.
Some 50 villagers of Loutolim, Verna and Nagoa had filed the criminal complaint against the SEZ promoters, ministers and bureaucrats involved and demanding an FIR to be registered in 2007.
“It is not a case where investigation has been carried out and no fraud has been found. Even if the FIR filed by the Parrikar government in 2012 on a High Court directive is withdrawn the investigations into our criminal complaint cannot be closed arbitrarily,” Monteiro added.
Monteiro said, it is also poetic injustice that the current Industries Minister, Vishwajit Rane, is behind the decision to withdraw the criminal cases into the fraudulent SEZ land allotments, in violation of the principle of recusing when conflict of interest is involved.
“He is the son of then Chief Minister Pratapsing Rane, who has been prima-facie indicted and asked to be investigated in the High Court order,” Monteiro added.
The first major blow the SEZs in Goa faced was the decision of the government of current Opposition Leader Digambar Kamat in 2008 to scrap the SEZ policy and the SEZs.
Kamat who had then succeeded Rane Senior as Chief Minister post the 2007 elections, bowed to popular demand, and his cabinet scrapped and denotified the SEZs. The decision was expectedly challenged individually by the SEZ promoters in the High Court, which clubbed and heard them together with those filed by activists over three years. Eventually, in the judgement delivered in November 2010, the Kamat government’s decision to denotify the SEZs was upheld. Also, the High Court while ruling on the questions raised on the land allotment in the petitions moved by the activists, found the allotments prima-facie illegal and directed the State to file FIRs and launch criminal investigations into the role of then CM Rane Sr, then Industries Minister Luizinho Faleiro, current Deputy Chief Minister Chandrakant Babu Kavlekar who was chairman IDC at the time, the IDC BoD, bureaucrats and others.
The Anti-Corruption Branch of the Goa Police, accordingly booked the FIRs but progress of the investigations, if any, has remained under cover much like has been the case with any similar ones involving powerful politicians in the country.
Meanwhile, the Apex Court before which the SEZ promoters had challenged the High Court order upholding the Kamat government’s decision to scrap the SEZs, refrained from interfering with the order but in February 2018 suggested negotiations between Goa IDC and the SEZ promoters for an amicable solution on the question of taking back the allotted land and at what compensation to them.
It was this ‘olive branch’ obliquely held out by the Apex Court that the Parrikar-led government latched on to and decided to withdraw the criminal cases and resolve the issue with an out-of court settlement.
Now, the current government of Dr Sawant initiated the move to execute this decision of the Parrikar cabinet of July 2018 and drop all the criminal proceedings. It has in effect taken the clock back to the time before the SEZs were initiated in 2005-06 when the then Pratapsing Rane-led government formulated the SEZ policy and allocated 38.4 lakh square meters collectively to seven SEZ promoter companies.
Most of the land is back with the Goa Industrial Development Corporation and the SEZ chapter is closed or nearly closed, unless the deal is questioned and dragged back to court by parties who litigated on the matter in the past.
The seven SEZ promoters are laughing all the way to their banks at the expense of the State and in the bargain, politicians, bureaucrats and alleged middlemen who were in the dock with the High Court prima-facie holding that they were dubiously entwined in the 13-year-long saga of SEZs in Goa, have gone unscathed raising several more questions on the inadequacies of the criminal justice system in tackling graft.
