Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Goa Blog

Goa Blog

Goa SEZ scam: Kamat still to read court order

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 07:36 AM PST

Over a fortnight after the Panaji bench of the Bombay High Court pointed to large-scale irregularities in the allotment of 32 lakh sq mts of land to seven SEZ promoters in Goa, Chief Minister Digambar Kamat claims he ’still has not read the order’.

Based on the Nov 26 high court order, the opposition has already called for criminal investigation of two former Congress chief ministers - Pratapsing Rane and Luizinho Faleiro - for favouring the SEZ promoters in what Leader of Opposition Manohar Parrikar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has termed a ‘Rs.100 crore scam’.

‘I have not even read the order, how can I comment,’ a smiling Kamat told IANS when asked how the state government would respond to the damning observation made by the court, which said that the government agencies had acted ‘in undue haste without proper scrutiny of their applications’ and ‘arbitrarily’ while allotting land to the SEZ promoters.

The court order also said that the ‘procedure adopted in the allotment is not fair and transparent. The allotments made by the GIDC (Goa Industrial Development Corporation) do not stand the test of reasonableness’.

‘The file is so thick,’ Kamat added.

Picking up another bulky file for demonstrative effect, the chief minister said, while mockingly shuffling the pages: ‘See, the high court order is this thick. How do you expect me to go through it?’

Parrikar has claimed that both Faleiro and Rane, currently the speaker of the Goa assembly, had been ‘hand in glove’ with the SEZ promoters and had gone out of their way to allot them huge tracts of land in violation of norms.

The BJP leader has already said that he would summon the seven SEZ promoters to probe the graft angle in the land allotment scam.

The SEZ promoters in question are Meditab Specialities Pvt Ltd, Cipla group, Peninsular Pharma Research Ltd, Paradigm Logistics & Distributors, Planetview Mercantile Pvt Ltd, Inox Mercentile Pvt Ltd and Maxgrow.

The state government was forced to de-notify the allotment of 32 lakh sq mts of land to the SEZ promoters in the face of stiff civil society protests some years ago. The SEZ promoters had then approached the Bombay High Court challenging the government’s denotification decision, before the court quashed and set aside their application on Nov 26.

Courtesy:Sify

Day 19: Parliament again collapses without business

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 03:46 AM PST

Parliament collapsed into din on Wednesday - the 19th day of no business - due to persistent opposition protests demanding a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe into the 2G spectrum row. Opposition MPs chanting slogans gathered near Speaker Meira Kumar’s podium the moment she opened the Lok

The government did manage to lay some papers and ministry reports on the table but nothing significant in terms of legislative bills could be accomplished.

Goa MP Francisco Sardinha, who was chairing the session, adjourned the house for the day within five minutes after 12.

The Rajya Sabha was adjourned under similar circumstances.

With just three more working days left before parliament closes to meet for the 2011-12 budget, it appears that the entire winter session has been lost to protests over the alleged irregularities in the second generation telephony spectrum allotment of 2008.

The paralysis in parliament since the winter session began Nov 9 has caused serious concerns with the government losing on crucial time to pass some important legislations.

The 24 sittings of the winter session was scheduled to take up bills on land acquisition, judicial accountability, reforming accounting standards, amending labour laws and setting up a national mineral regulation authority. None of them has happened.

The government did manage to get a parliament nod for crucial supplemental spending bills by voice vote, without a debate.

As the government and the opposition remain stuck to their stand on JPC, the logjam is causing a loss of Rs 7.8 crore per day to the national exchequer.

A Raja, who was forced to quit as the IT and communication minister, is alleged to have sold spectrum licenses at rates much lower than the market causing huge financial losses to the national exchequer.

Proceedings in the Lok Sabha began with Meira Kumar expressing condolences over the loss of lives in rains in Tamil Nadu and Tuesday’s blast in Varanasi which killed a two-year-old girl and left over 20 people injured.

The house observed a minute’s silence in the memory of the dead.

Courtesy:HT

Goa Police issued notice in Israeli drug dealer case

Posted: 08 Dec 2010 01:30 AM PST

The Panaji bench of the Bombay High Court Wednesday issued notice to the Goa police asking it to reply within a month to the bail application of Israeli drug dealer who was arrested here in February.

In his application, Dudu said he should be released on bail because police had not been able to file a chargesheet even 10 months after his arrest.

However, the state police said the chargesheet is delayed because the forensic examination of the drugs seized from him in February was not completed yet.

‘The Central Forensic Science Laboratory report of the Rs.3 lakh worth of drugs has not been received yet. We will file the chargsheet as soon as the results are received,’ a police officer said.

According to the police, Dudu was the lynchpin of the drug trade in north Goa, which includes narcotics hubs like Anjuna, Calangute, Arambol and Morjim - all beach stretches known for easy availability of drugs.

Police also said that Dudu was involved in the drug trade in Goa for more than a decade. He was arrested in 2008 by the Mumbai police and had earlier been served a ‘Leave India’ notice as well.

Courtesy:Sify

Goa eyes expats as resource for educational institutions

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 08:40 AM PST

Goa government wants to tap men-of-letters of Goan origin in Europe and other parts of the world to be resource persons for its educational institutions, an official said Tuesday.

‘We have asked Indian embassies across the globe to compile a list of qualified Goans who can be invited as resource persons in various institutions spread across the state,’ Goa’s commissioner for non-resident Indian (NRI) affairs Eduadro Faleiro said.

‘We have requested the embassies for information and contact details of qualified Goan expatriates, scientists, information technologists, educationist and others,’ the former minister of state for external affairs said, adding that once the list was compiled, the state government would individually contact the persons.

‘A significant number of Goans live in European Union member states such as Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Luxembourg. We want to utilise their talents for the betterment of the state they hail from,’ he said.

Courtesy::Sify

Goa activists want highway consultant penalised

Posted: 07 Dec 2010 08:12 AM PST

Activists protesting the expansion of a national highway in Goa Tuesday demanded the recovery of Rs.9 crore fee from a foreign consultant for preparing an allegedly faulty project report.

The consultant firm should be forced to pay back Rs.9 crore fee it charged to prepare site plans for a project funded by the union ministry of road transport and highways, said a representative of the protestors.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference here, Sunil Desai, convenor of the National Highway Diversion Action Committee (NHDAC), said that a government land acquisition report had revealed that the project report prepared by the US-based Wilbur Smith Associates (WSA) was ridden with discrepancies.

The committee has challenged the expansion of the NH 4A - that starts from Belgaum in Karnataka and ends at Panaji in Goa. The highway is 153 km long.

‘We demand that the government should reclaim the Rs.9 crore given to WSA because a deputy collector’s report has said that there are numerous discrepancies in the work,’ Desai said.

According to deputy collector Anthony D’Souza’s report, the process of site inspection and identification of the boundaries of the land notified for acquisition, it was observed that there were major discrepancies in the site plans prepared by the consultant.

The consultant has gone off track while showing the area required to be acquired and the area already in possession of the state government of Goa, said the deputy collector’s report.

The NHDAC is protesting the state government’s move to acquire 51.60 lakh square metres of land for the expansion of the highway.

The committee claims that the government should seek an alternative route for the highway, instead of expanding the current highway and bulldozing homes along the motorway.

Courtesy:Sify
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