Codar locals meet Ravi, voice their objections to IIT project

PANAJI
A group of residents of Kasamshell in Codar met Agriculture Minister Ravi Naik in Ponda to voice their objections to the government's decision to set up the permanent campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) there.
The residents of this hamlet at the foot of the Codar plateau, where the State government proposes to locate the permanent campus of IIT-Goa, are engaged in farming and mostly hail from the tribal community.
The villagers told the minister that their farming livelihoods will be at stake if the IIT campus is located there.
The Codar site, belonging to the Codar Comunidade, has been notified by the Administrator of Comunidades (Central) zone, which the government intends to take on a permanent lease basis.
A massive parcel of 1.4 million square metres of land on the plateau adjoining the Agriculture department's Codar farm has been identified for the campus of the prestigious technical institution.
Currently, IIT-Goa operates from a temporary campus at Farmagudi, which it shares with the Goa Engineering College.
The Kasamshell residents, who claim to be the third generation engaged in agricultural livelihoods at the foot of the Codar hills, have also presented a written memorandum to Naik listing the reasons for their objections.
They fear that if the IIT campus is set up on the plateau atop the Codar hills, it will affect the water table due to borewells being drilled, give rise to human-animal conflict as the hills are inhabited by bisons and leopards, besides adversely impacting the rich biodiversity of the area.
The residents opposed to the project have so far attracted support from Opposition politicians and parties, who have demanded that the government, instead of destroying pristine green cover there, locate the IIT campus on land already acquired and vacant SEZ land in Savoi Verem, where Thappar-Dupont's controversial Nylon 6,6 project had been abandoned in the 1990s.