the goan I network
MAPUSA
Alleging that the Calangute Outline Development Plan (ODP) was a big scam of Rs 800 crore, former sarpanch Joseph Sequeira said Calangute village can do without the Planning Development Authority (PDA).
“We don’t need PDA. The panchayats have been given enough powers under the 73rd and 74th amendment of the Goa Panchayati Raj Act where a village can draw up its own plan,” said Sequeira, while addressing a news conference in his Calangute office on Tuesday.
The former sarpanch said that under the Constitution of India, the panchayats have powers to prepare plans for villages.
“Under the Constitution of India Article 243G, panchayats have powers to prepare plans for economic development and Article 243ZD says panchayats have to constitute a village planning committee to prepare a draft development plan,” he said.
Alleging that the Calangute MLA was the biggest beneficiary of the plans prepared under the present draft ODP, Sequeira said five people were holding Calangute village to ransom along with the local MLA.
Calling the ODP a big scam, he said the areas were demarcated as per the wishes of a few select self-interested people.
“A building opposite my office is shown as C3 zone, but a structure next to it has been indicated as settlement. Such controversial demarcation of zones are rampant in the plan,” Sequeira said.
He said people of Calangute through a gram sabha had objected the draft Calangute-Candolim ODP 2025 and accordingly, filed a writ petition in the High Court in 2017.
“The first thing that the new panchayat body did after coming to power was to withdraw the petition from the High Court without any reason and without informing the gram sabha,” he said.
He said that a resolution to withdraw the petition was illegally recorded without discussion and contrary to the provisions of the Goa Panchayat Raj Act.
The former sarpanch disclosed that the draft Calangute-Candolim ODP 2025 was adopted and made operational in a very surreptitious manner.
“The order was not signed by the principal secretary of TCP and the then TCP minister and deputy chief minister,” Sequeira said.
He said the local MLA and his aides were spreading lies and misleading the people of the village that their houses will be regularized under the PDA.
“When the sarpanch was asked if the houses under the CRZ will be regularized and the owners will be issued a sanad, he had no answer,” the ex-sarpanch said.
Sequeira said that he had written a letter to TCP Minister Vijai Sardessai against illegal conversion of land in Arpora-Nagao in the name of one Lamani, but the minister had no courtesy to even reply to the letter.
“Is this the goem, goemkar and goemkarponn that the TCP minister is practicing?” he rued.
