All along we all knew without a shadow of a doubt that the ministers in successive governments in Goa were out to fill their own pockets in the name of development. With honey in their mouth, they win the election and then sting us with their tail.
After scavenging even, the innards of Goa for decades, the non-Goan chief minister of Goa Pramod Sawant and his partner in crime Panchayat minister Mauvin Godinho have now set their sights on Comunidade land.
Under the guise of regularization of illegal construction, these two cabinet vultures now want to forage the age-old institution set up by the erstwhile Portuguese.
To appease the migrants for their votes for 2024 general elections, Mauvin Godinho wants their patronage and thus in a hurry to regularize lakhs of square meters of Goan Comunidade land for the ‘Bhumiputras’.
And ‘Bhumiputra’ chief minister of Goa Sawant is only too happy to bring in non-Goans like himself and sell the state to achieve what the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) could not.
That the ‘Ghatti’ chief minister of Goa is completely a turn-coat is very much evident because, in January this year Jan 18, 2023), while speaking in the Assembly on ‘Goa Regularization of Unauthorised Construction (Amendment) Bill had said that illegal houses in government and Comunidade land will be demolished.
10 months later the same man is talking about rectifying the Comunidade Code to regularize illegal houses.
Nowhere in the Regularization of Unauthorised Construction (Amendment) Bill 2023 passed by the Assembly does Comunidade land features, simply because Comunidade is governed by its Code.
For the knowledge of the ‘bhumiputra’ chief minister of Goa, the Code of Comunidade was codified by the erstwhile Portuguese regime in 1904 and then in 1933. The final notified code legislative diploma 2070 was approved on April 15, 1961. This last code is in force and the current management and administration of Comunidades happen based on this code.
Comunidades are autonomous village level bodies envisaged by the Code of Comunidade in force and the government only provides administrative guidance at the expense of the Comunidades. Hence the government has no power to legalise illegal constructions existing on Comunidade land as the Comunidade bodies are the absolute owners of the land.
Rectification of Comunidade Code is not at all in the interest of Goa and Goans but only to give a backdoor entry to ‘ghattis’ illegally squatting on its land.
In January 2021 too, the BJP government tried a similar tactic to regularize illegal squatters but had to withdraw it because of stiff opposition from Goans.
Goans have also not forgotten that Pramod Sawant being a non-Goan tried to snatch his landlord’s land using Goa, Daman and Diu Mundkars (Protection from Eviction) Act, 1975, but finally withdrew his case.
The non-Goan chief minister of Goa failed in his attempts to grab land from the ‘bhatkar’, but now he wants to allow other non-Goans to be owners of lakhs and lakhs of sq. mts. of Comunidade land.
Pramod Sawant is out to destroy Goa and make Goans alien in their land.
Go home! Quit Goa! Pramod Sawant.
The chief minister talks about courts being burdened with civil cases for eviction and demolition prayers by Comunidade executive bodies and thinks that rectifying the Comunidade Code and regularizing illegal construction will solve the matter.
Justice A S Oka of Bombay High Court while rejecting the Maharashtra Government plea, seeking to implement a policy to regularise illegal structures across the state had observed that the proposed regularisation policy will lead to increased litigation by creating so many loopholes for people to argue.
He further stated that when these structures undergo redevelopment, they will also be eligible for more construction rights.
In yet another case a division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Girish Kulkarni, expressed “grave doubts” over the policy of the state government “which rewards the encroachers of the public land by a free of cost accommodation.”
“In our opinion, such policies qua the Government land not only violate the principles of equality but certainly falls foul of the doctrine of public trust,” the bench had observed.
The same justices also stated, “At the outset, we may observe that the petitioners who have encroached cannot elevate their protection to such an extent that such slum dwellers have to be rehabilitated either on the same land or be provided a permanent alternate accommodation within the vicinity.”
But in Goa, Goans feel the solution of regularization of these illegal migrants is simple, the ‘Bhumiputra chief minister Pramod Sawant (nicknamed Property Sawant) and Panchayat minister Mauvin Godinho should rehabilitate all the migrants in the large tract of properties and lands they have bought in Goa under various benami names.
Interestingly a day after the ambitious statement, Sawant must have felt the tremors under his feet and is now trying to get out of the sticky situation by claiming that constructions in slums will not be regularized but of Goans who have built illegally in Comunidade.
This ‘ghatti’ CM of Goa thinks he can fool us but we can see through and through his intention, especially because he made the statement while addressing the migrants alongside with Mauvin Godinho - the saviour of the migrant squatters on Comunidade land.
