on november 26, 2006, nearly 1,000 villagers of Chicalim, a village on the banks of the Zuari river in Goa, gathered for an unprecedented third gram sabha to vote against the Bharati Shipyard Ltd's plan of building a second ship building yard there. The shipyard, however, has the backing of the village sarpanch Raul D'Costa and the panchayat members. The gram sabha meet has forced the shipyard to abandon its plans and has exposed the divide between gram sabha and the sarpanch.
"The 73rd constitution amendment empowers the village and its people, but the panchayat council has tried to conquer power and not allow the gram sabha to percolate it," says political scientist Aureliano Fernandes.
As a corrective measure, Bharti advertised its intentions claiming it had had a change of mind and now wanted to build a training institute along with the shipbuilding yard.The advertisement also claimed that the rapid environmental impact assessment had given Bharti the green light. The company has paid quite an amount of money for an area of 1,39,170 sq m, out of which, the company says, only 44,000 sq m will be used for the institute and the remaining land will remain as it is. But Fawia Menezes Misquita, the Chicalim Villagers Action Committee
(CVAC)
legal advisor said she was not impressed
by Bharti's sudden midcourse correc-tion
and intentions for such a huge
piece of land.
"It is sapal and marshy. Thick man-grove
vegetation grows on such marshy
land. As for Bharti's claim that not an
inch is khazan, there is no ambiguity on
this. Khazan is land on the riverfront
affected by tidal waves, which may or
may not be cultivable. This land was
however cultivated until two decades
ago and then used for pisiculture,
resulting in it becoming uncultivable.
This was registered in Forms I and XIV.
'Khazan' denotes land type and not the
quality of soil," says Misquita.
Besides, the company's claims that
the directorate of land survey had
labelled that land uncultivable, was just
a cover up of their intentions, she says.
"It is well known that the land was ear-marked
in the revised outline develop-ment
plan as industrial zone through
manipulation. This is not possible
otherwise, because it falls under the
Coastal Regulation Zone, category I,
because of its rich mangrove growth,"
says Misquita.
On October 31, deputy chief minis-ter
Wilfred de Souza declared that the
government has issued show cause
notices to Bharti and the sarpanch and
that all construction work should stop.
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