the goan I network
PANAJI
Congress leader Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco on Wednesday revealed in the Goa Legislative Assembly title of nearly 36,000 square metres of the Serula Comunidade land was mysteriously changed through two dubious 2017 mutation processes, thus exposing yet another land scam.
Responding to Lourenco, Revenue Minister Rohan Khaunte admitted that there was wrong-doing by the revenue officials saying prima facie “it looks to be a case of corruption.”
Khaunte revealed that the chunk of land was allotted two separate survey numbers - 221/1 for 29,000 square metres and 222/1 for 7000 sq mts - through dubious mutation processes over just five months.
Khaunte said the land in question is in the jurisdiction of his own Porvorim constituency and involves a case in which an ‘aframento’ granted by the Serula Comunidade was sought to be transferred by the son from his dead father’s name.
The minister, in support of his answer to Lourenco’s question tabled during Question Hour, placed voluminous material related to the matter on the table of the House.
Khaunte said, the original allotment of the ‘aframento’ in the 1960s itself appeared dubious as it bore the stamp of the King of Portugual although the document post dates the Liberation of Goa.
The role of the revenue officials concerned, including the talathi, joint mamlatdar and the then administrator of Comunidades, will be probed and the government will also look into the criminal angle, Khaunte said.
The minister in his very first remarks in reply to Lourenco’s question said, since December 2012, there is a standing order of the government to the Comunidades not to give any plots away, so any allotments from then till date are deemed to be illegal.
“They (Comunidades) are doing whatever they want, (zai tem kartat),” Khaunte said and made a case for a new law to replace the Code of Comunidades as recommended by a Commission in 2016.
Strangely while the two mutation processes were completed in flat five months, Khaunte said in a written reply to another question that a whopping 4,120 mutation cases were pending for the last 3 years. And ironically, Bardez taluka where Serula Communidade lies, tops among the talukas for the highest number of pending cases with 1001 pending.
The exposure of this latest scam in Serula Comunidade comes after the one involving former minister in the earlier BJP government, Dilip Parulekar, who is alleged to have usurped prime land on the Chogm Road at Porvorim.
