Uncalled for Corporation?

IN his message on the eve of the Independence Day, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar reiterated his mission to transform Goa into an intelligent and welfare State to provide a dignified living to the people. One welcomes welfare schemes but, unfortunately, most of the schemes also only been greeted with a hue and cry: the beach management in Miramar, widening of the Campal road and the more recent one is the Panjim Corporation bill, which was passed hastily by Goa's Legislative Assembly.

The Bill seeks to make the Panjim Municipal Council a Corporation and bring within its jurisdiction the villages of Santa Cruz, Bambolim and Penha da Franca along with some parts of Salvador do Mundo, Socorro, Reis Magos, Pilerne and Sangolda. If the move is to usher in development in the villages under question, the same should have been the case with Taleigao. But despite being a part of the Panjim Municipal Council it is excluded from the proposed 50-member Panaji Municipal Corporation while annexing areas across the Mandovi river, in Bardez, and contiguous areas of Calapor and Bambolim.

The government's introduction of the bill to constitute the 'City of Panaji' Corporation sparked a walk-out by the Opposition Congress members. On August 26 the Goa legislative assembly passed the bill amidst strong protests from the Opposition. Dayanand Narvekar did move a motion seeking to refer the bill to a select committee in vain. Minister for Urban Development Digamber Kamat championed the Bill, justifying that the Corporation will look after the infrastructural needed of a developing State.

After having ensured the successful passage of the Bill, the Chief Minister has been trying to assure everyone that the respective MLAs would be consulted prior to the notification of the relevant areas which have been earmarked to be merged into the corporation. When the assembly was adjourned after 26 sitting and a month-long debate on the budgetary demands, the Panaji City Corporation Bill was one of the major piece of legislation transacted.

Opinion against the State government's inexplicable haste to introduce the legislation for forming the "City of Panaji" Corporation, is burgeoning gradually. Led by Aldona MLA Dayanand Narvekar, Porvorim displayed its total displeasure by observing a "band" at Porvorim last month. A sufficiently large "mocha" was taken out from the Panjim bus-stand towards the Secretariat, to register the protest against what Narvekar termed as "injustice" to the residents of Penha de Franca, Salvador-do-Mundo, Socorro, Reis Magos and Pilerne. He urged the villagers of the concerned villages to resort to a "peaceful agitation" against the proposal. The Congress MLAs and leaders were seen on the streets after a very long time.

The corporation status would expedite the process of urbanization but would the village population be able to cope up with the city problems like higher taxes, garbage, etc? Just recently the villagers in Betul raised a heated debate on the issue of house tax in the Gram Sabha. Of course, they would refuse to pay higher house tax until such time as the panchayat collected such taxes from the ONGC.

The opposition to the hurried passing of City of Panaji Corporation Bill is steadily gaining ground. From Porvorim the protest has been snowballing, spreading to Penha-da-Franca and Salvador-do Mundo, whose residents blocked the Aldona-Panjim road for an entire day. Nearly 700 villagers on August 31 observed a chain hunger strike in front of the Penha de Franca panchayat to demand the immediate scrapping of the controversial Bill.

Santa Cruz is already irked with the proposal of a sports city which they fear would affect the ecologically fragile belt of low-lying land at Bondir. Now they have taken up the issue of protesting against the City of Panaji Corporation Bill, 2002, in right earnest with MLA Victoria Fernandes providing important inputs.

The Panaji municipal councilors, one expected, would react to the sticky situation but they have been largely keeping mum on the issue. Nitin Kunkolienkar, president of Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry opines that the Corporation proposal is worth a try from the economic point of view since the Panjim city cannot expand further Porvorim has to play the role of a satellite town.

Some critics of the bill opine that taking away the prime areas from the half-a-dozen panchayats --Penha da Franca, Pilerne, Salvador-do-Mundo, Socorro, Reis Magos and Sangolda in Bardez taluka--to cobble a municipal corporation will spell doom for Penha da Franca and to some extent to Salvador-do-Mundo, and render the two panchayats bankrupt. The Corporation's advent is also seen as a move to clip the wings of the North Goa Planning and Development Authority as the City of Panaji Corporation Bill, 2002, states that from the commencement of the Act the Panjim Corporation will be the planning and development authority for the region covered by it.

They claim that Parrikar's assurance that the City of Panaji Corporation Bill, which is passed by the Goa Legislative Assembly, will not be implemented unless all those concerned are consulted and their opinion taken into consideration, hardly makes sense. The right procedure would have been to discuss it threadbare and get everyone to consent before going ahead and passing the bill.

As for the residents of Panjim, they seem to care too hoots whether they remain in a Municipal Council or in a Corporation because what the Council has failed to do so far, the Corporation is unlikely to achieve.

Three political parties--the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party-have taken up the fight to ensure that the Corporation does not materialize. They say that though it is stated in the bill that the government is required to invite objections from the general public for inclusion or exclusion of areas.

The bulk of Goa lies in the southern talukas, and yet the government has shifted the assembly further North beyond the Mandovi river. And now it is trying to snatch the areas from select panchayats to form the City of Panaji Municipal Corporation. The movement against it is building up steam. The Congress Party, which appeared to have been lost in the wilderness for quite some, seems to have sighted a path of recovery at last. But will the role played by political parties ensure the victory of those fighting against the bill?

JD