PANAJI
Goenkars Against PDA, the collective of activists and campaigners who orchestrated a rallying cry at a public meeting last week to denotify all PDAs in Goa, has hit back at Town and Country Planning Minister Vijai Sardesai for misunderstanding their demand and have promised to lead a delegation to meet him on the issue.
Addressing a press conference, several activists pointed out how Sardesai, in a bid to discredit them, said that they were seeking the scrapping of the TCP Department which clearly wasn’t the case.
“We have not demanded that the TCP Department be disbanded. Our demands are only to denotify PDAs from all the villages of Goa, amend the TCP Act to give (rightfully due) constitutional powers to the villages and to scrap the Regional Plan 2021. We have not demanded that the TCP Act be scrapped totally, but it should be amended,” Arturo
D’Souza the convener of the movement said.
“The Town and Country Planning Minister instead of giving Goans an Easter gift has ridiculed them by sending out an ‘April Fools Day’ message,” Arturo added.
The group which addressed the press included activists from Calangute and Candolim and other villages affected by PDA as well as former Santa Cruz candidate Rodolfo Fernandes. It asserted that even though the minister has refused to speak to them, they will continue to attempt to secure an audience
with him.
“We appeal to the Cabinet Advisory Committee to listen to our demands. We will protest as we have always done in the past without any violence. Our mission will be to enlighten the general public and we will now fan out to the state to bring about awareness on the ill effects of the PDAs,” D’Souza said.
The group has been demanding that the PDAs be done away with and the Act be amended as was attempted in 2009 where amendments to the Town and Country Planning Act that were in tune with the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution were tabled in the Legislative Assembly but never passed.
Sardesai, in response to the rally, had said that he could not do anything as the protesters were demanding that the Act and the Department itself be scrapped.
Another activist Rama Kankonkar questioned the logic behind Goa Forward Party’s claims that the numbers at the rally were not sufficient to warrant a reaction from the government.
“Is this government of the type that wants to force people to come on the streets to demand what is their right?” Kankonkar asked.
