Revenue Minister Atanasio Babush Monserrate has turned his once serene village of Taleigao into one noisy concrete jungle by misusing his own clout/position and sitting in different ruling political parties/governments in Goa. He is now seen mischievously eyeing the comunidade lands and desperately trying to bring his so-called 'amendments' to dilute the autonomy of these age-old local community bodies and to give the State government more powers to deal with them. In short, he wants to somehow bully his own government to take full control of all the comunidade bodies under some pretext or the other and later wants to indulge in his usual loot by single-handedly slowly selling all these protected lands to the highest bidder/builders lobby.
I think that our TCP Minister Vishwajit Rane who is trying to make a big show by selectively targeting a few small fishes for allegedly indulging in some land-grabbing activities, converting tenanted plots, khazan lands, no-development zones/hill slopes etc and later selling them for outsiders should also start investigating all the past land deals of his own present colleague Babush on top priority basis if he really wants to do something really worthwhile for Goans in Goa.
The comunidade land historically belongs to the gaunkars alone and due to which they alone should have a fundamental right to protect these lands independently in the near future too in Goa, but not the State government.
