MAPUSA
As opposed to the marathon gram sabha in Calangute, which ran for more than seven hours on Sunday, in Anjuna the gram sabha ended within 15 minutes.
Since no one had put up any proposals, the gram sabha after reading the minutes of the previous gram sabha meeting wound up without any discussion.
Further, only 12 persons attended the Sunday’s gram sabha meeting clearly showing lack of interest among the locals. Anjuna Sarpanch, Savio Almeida, acknowledged that the panchayat had not received any proposals and therefore the meeting ended within no time.
“People of my village are very happy, as we have been carrying out development works to the satisfaction of everyone. The fact that nobody has put up any proposals indicate that,” Almeida said. But Ramesh Naik, a resident of the village bagged to differ. “Most of the villagers don’t attend the gram sabhas because the local panchayat fails to address their concerns. In the past, whenever proposals were put up at the gram sabha, the sarpanch either gave evasive answers or rejected the proposals on weird grounds,” said Naik, who writes for a local vernacular newspaper.
For the record, in the last gram sabha too there was no much discussion and the meeting ended in less than an hour’s time.
The poor response also shows that the opposition group in the Anjuna panchayat has failed to live up to the expectations of the villagers. In the 11-member panchayat, three members “ Surendra Govekar, Sheetal Dabholkar and Hanumant Govekar “ are in the opposition camp.
