VASCO
Velsao Panchayat on Sunday convened a special Gramsabha only to discuss the burning issue of double tracking being undertaken in the village.
The special Gram Sabha meeting was called after villagers in the previous Gram Sabha had expressed concerns over the intentions of NGOs and activists alleging them to have political intentions while opposing the double tracking and had questioned why the NGOs and social activists had never approached the panchayats for support or informed the villagers of any developments on the double tracking issue especially when the environment Minister Nilesh Cabral and CM Dr Pramod Sawant had personally visited the village and walked along the tracks.
The Gram Sabha saw a lot of discussions, where villages were briefed about the actions taken by NGOs and activists while the villagers questioned why Panchayats was not informed of all these activities though appreciating the efforts of the NGOs and Activists. The villagers were finally briefed about what steps had been taken in the past and what steps were needed to be taken in the near future, in case the double tracking project had to be stopped . One of the options was that the panchayat could move to High Court and get a stay on the wrong implementation of the Railways Act to acquire properties in the village.
A social worker also moved a proposal to the Panchayat to adopt a resolution where landlords of the village should not be allowed to sell the land alongside the existing tracks to anyone including railways authorities.
Speaking to media later, sarpanch Henriques D'Mello said that the Panchayat had taken a resolution object to double tracking activities and that a resolution would be taken where private landlords will not be allowed to sell land along side the existing tracks.
"We have realized that the property on the either side of the existing tracks does not belong to railways but to local landlords and has not been acquired. We have recieved another resolution asking the panchayat to direct the landlords not to sell properties to Railways," said D'Mello.
Social worker and former panch Roquezinho D'Souza said that he was the first person to oppose the double tracking and was instrumental to stop the Panchayats secretary from carrying out a survey and demarcation of land alongside the tracks on the directives of the BDO way back in March last year.
"I had some valid grounds and I decided to take the issue and got the order by BDO revoked and stopped the survey immediately. Similarly if there is valid ground that the Railway act had been wrongly implemented to try and acquire land, then we must go to high court and get this stopped but no one wants to speak on the issues. Secondly now the land alongside the tracks does not belong to railways and belongs to local private landlords and railways cannot acquire this land until it is sold to them. While the railways are not coming in the picture, they have appointed brokers who plan to buy this land and subsequently sell to railways. If we stop these landlords from selling the land to anyone, no one can do anything and the double tracking can never happen and hence I moved a proposal for a Gram Sabha resolution that this land alongside the tracks should not be allowed to be sold by the local landlords to anyone," said D'Souza.
